81 N.Y.S. 855 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1903
On the 6th day of June, 1901, one Belle S. McGlynn, in consideration of the payment of $17.23, and her agreement to pay the like sum on the 27th day of August, November, February, and May, thereafter, in every year, obtained from the New York Life Insurance Company a 20-year endowment policy upon her life, and designated the plaintiff, her niece, as the person to whom the insurance money should be paid in case of the death of the insured before the maturity of the policy. Upon the delivery of this policy to the insured, she delivered the same to her infant niece, the plaintiff in this action, and the beneficiary named in the instrument; using language which the court has found sufficient to establish a completed gift. The evidence, we believe, is sufficient to support the conclusion reached below. The policy was then, at the mutual request of the said Belle S. McGlynn and the plaintiff, delivered into the hands of Frank T. McGlynn, the uncle of both of the parties mentioned, for safe-keeping, and was by him deposited in a safe in his house. It remained there for some months, when it was sent by the plaintiff’s mother, with other papers belonging to Belle S. McGlynn, to the insured, but without directions either from the infant or from her father, who was then living, and with no intention on their part, so far as the evidence discloses, to part with its ownership. The insured had in the meantime gone to live with Annie E. Curry, the defendant. She was ill with measles, developing pneumonia, and four days before her death she made a written request to the New York Life Insurance Company to change the beneficiary to the defendant; declaring in her letter that the policy was not then assigned, to comply-with a provision in the policy that a change of beneficiary might be made at any time if the policy had not then been assigned. The company made the memorandum on the policy changing the beneficiary, and it is before this court, not as a contestant, but for the purpose of having determined which one of the claimants is entitled to the money. The learned court at Special Term, by deciding that there was a completed gift of the policy to the plaintiff, has defeated the change of beneficiary attempted to be made by the insured, and the defendant Curry appeals from the judgment.
We find no difficulty in holding that the evidence in this case supported the conclusion of the court at Special Term. There can be no reasonable doubt that the insured delivered and intended to convey to the plaintiff the policy of insurance, and the law is fairly well established that no written transfer was necessary; that the unqualified delivery of the policy to her for the purpose of vesting title in
A member of a benefit society has the unqualified right, under the statute, to change his beneficiary without consulting the latter. Fink v. D., L. & W. Mutual Aid Society, 57 App. Div. 507, 512, 68 N. Y. Supp. 80. But this is merely his right as against the society, whose by-laws govern the method of procedure, and has nothing to do with the case of a policy issued by an insurance company organized for profit, and which has been given to the beneficiary named in the policy. Such a policy is not a contract of assurance for a single year, with a privilege of renewal from year to year by paying the annual premium, but is an entire contract of assurance for life, subject to discontinuance and forfeiture for nonpayment of any of the stipulated premiums. Each installment is, in fact, part consideration of the entire insurance for life (New York Life Ins. Co. v. Statham, 93 U. S. 24, 30, 23 L. Ed. 789); and when the insured, in the case at bar, made her initial payment and delivered the policy, with intent to convey ownership in the plaintiff, there was a value involved, of which the plaintiff could not be divested by any subsequent act on the part of the insured without her consent. The plaintiff, by reason of the consummated gift, had
The judgment appealed from should be affirmed, with costs. All concur.
