- Amount
- $1,079,000 (full fund awarded: $1,000,000 policy plus interest)
- Counsel
- Interpleader Law
- Result for
- The insured's daughter, our client
- Case
- American General Life Insurance Co. v. O.H.M.
- Court
- U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida; affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
- Docket
- No. 8:20-cv-1581-WFJ-CPT; 11th Cir. No. 22-10220
- Decided
- September 6, 2023
- Issue
- Whether a beneficiary change the insurer rejected as incomplete, and the insured never corrected, took effect
The insured named his daughter, then a child, as the only beneficiary of a $1,000,000 policy in 2008. A year later, after he remarried, he mailed in a form splitting the benefit 75/25 between his new wife and his daughter. The insurer did not record it. It wrote back within days, pointed out two problems with the form and enclosed a blank one. He never sent it back. When he died more than ten years later, his widow and his daughter both claimed the money, and the insurer filed an interpleader in federal court in Tampa.
We represented the daughter. Florida requires an insured to strictly comply with the policy’s own procedure for changing a beneficiary, and this policy let the insurer take reasonable action before recording a change. Rejecting an incomplete form and explaining how to fix it was reasonable. The widow argued that the letter never arrived, but Florida presumes that mail sent in the ordinary course of business was received, and nothing rebutted that presumption.
The district court granted summary judgment for our client. The widow appealed, and we defended the judgment in the Eleventh Circuit, which affirmed in September 2023, holding that the insured “did not strictly comply with the terms of the policy” because he never answered the notice or followed up in the decade that followed. The registry funds, with interest, were then paid to the daughter.
What it shows. A change form in the insurer’s file is not the same as a completed change. If the insurer reasonably rejected it and the insured never cured it, the earlier designation can still control.
Read the court's order
- Eleventh Circuit opinion (Sept. 6, 2023) (PDF)
- District court summary judgment order (Dec. 16, 2021) (PDF)
For a detailed legal summary of this decision, see interpleader.com's decisions library.
Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. This summary describes the court's ruling; it is not legal advice about any other case.
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