148 Iowa 400 | Iowa | 1910
After the issues had been made up, judgment, on-motion of plaintiffs, was entered in their favor for the amount of the certificate of insurance less deductions for the reserve fund. Necessarily, this ruling was based on facts conceded by the pleadings, and these may be stated. The defendant is a fraternal society organized under chapter 9 of title 9 of the Code, and as such delivered to Geo. D. Wood a certificate of insurance, May 31, 1899, with his then wife, Ella E. Wood, named therein as beneficiary. ,The certificate in terms made the application part thereof, and agreed “that in event of my death by suicide, whether sane or insane, any certificate issued upon said application by said order shall be void.” A by-law allowedi any member to change beneficiaries if the -assured pay to the correspondent a fee of fifty cents and deliver to him the benefit certificate with written surrender on the back thereof and directions as to the change desired and name and relationship of the beneficiary. “The correspondent shall then forward the certificate with the fee of fifty cents to the chief correspondent, who shall at’ once issue a benefit certificate as requested.” Ella
Assuming, ■ as we must, that the certificate had never reached the insured, there could have been no acquiescence on his part in the change from the certificate surrendered whereby the monthly assessments were increased and the indemnity decreased by the reservation clause. As to these, there had been no agrément. Mutual assent, the meeting of the minds, as essential to a contract of insurance as any other, was utterly wanting. Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Young, 90 U. S. 85 (23 L. Ed. 152); Yore v. Bankers’, etc., Ass’n, 88 Cal. 612 (26 Pac. 514); Robinson v. U. S. Ben. Soc., 132 Mich. 695 (94 N. W. 211, 102 Am. St. Rep. 436). This conclusion is not obviated by the circumstance that certificates such as the last were issued to persons becoming members after January 1, 1902, for deceased was already a member; nor is there any basis for a plea in estoppel because of defendant pleading the new conditions, for it does not rely on these as a defense, as suggested, but on the fact that the assured had never assented thereto, and for-this reason the certificate did not become effective as a contract. Plainly enough, under these well-settled principles, the substituted beneficiaries might