Brinson v. Brinson

• Decision Date: 16 June 1964
• Docket Number: No. 9335.,9335.
• Citation: 334 F.2d 155
• Parties: Ernest Ray BRINSON and Laura Brinson Morris, Plaintiffs, and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Defendant, Appellees, v. Clara BRINSON, also known as Clara Landers, Third-Party Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

334 F.2d 155 (1964)

Ernest Ray BRINSON and Laura Brinson Morris, Plaintiffs, and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Defendant, Appellees, v. Clara BRINSON, also known as Clara Landers, Third-Party Defendant, Appellant.

No. 9335.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued April 28, 1964.

Decided June 16, 1964.

Stanley E. Sacks, Norfolk, Va. (Sacks, Sacks & Kendall, Norfolk, Va., on brief), for appellant.

Bernard B. Hollowell, Bayboro, N. C. (Raymond E. Dunn, New Bern, N. C., on brief), for appellees.

Before SOBELOFF, Chief Judge, and BOREMAN and J. SPENCER BELL, Circuit Judges.

J. SPENCER BELL, Circuit Judge.

Appellant, Clara Brinson, appeals, from the district court's denial of her motion for summary judgment and entry of summary judgment in favor of appellees, Ernest Ray Brinson, Laura Brinson Morris, and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company hereinafter Metropolitan. At issue is whether the district court properly held, as a matter of law, that Clara Brinson did not qualify as the widow of deceased insured, Ernest Brinson, and therefore was not entitled to the proceeds of a $7,000.00 insurance policy issued by Metropolitan pursuant to the Federal Employees' Group Life Insurance Act¹ on Ernest Brinson's life.

The following basic facts are undisputed. Ernest Brinson and Clara Brinson (née Gaskill) were legally married in Pamlico County, North Carolina, on June 3, 1934. From the union were born two children; Ernest Ray Brinson and Laura Brinson. Sometime after the birth of their children, the Brinsons left North Carolina and moved to Virginia. The marriage did not prosper, and on February 26, 1945, Ernest Brinson obtained a divorce decree a mensa et thoro from the Circuit Court of Norfolk County, Virginia, adjudicating the fact of Clara Brinson's desertion on October 6, 1944, and awarding him custody of the children. After the decree was entered Ernest Brinson and the children returned to North Carolina. Upon his return, Ernest Brinson accepted a job with the United States Government and in connection with his employment acquired the Metropolitan life insurance policy here in issue. Clara Brinson remained in Virginia, and on September 27, 1947, she and Paul Willis Landers applied to the Clerk of the Corporation Court of Norfolk County, Virginia, for a marriage license. The license was issued and the marriage ceremony performed on October 3, 1947. Ernest Brinson, who had never remarried, died on June 7, 1961, some thirteen years after Clara Brinson's second marriage. Ernest Brinson died without having designated any named beneficiaries under the policy.

The Federal Employees' Group Life Insurance Act² provides for the following priority of payments:

"First, to the beneficiary or beneficiaries as the employee may have designated by a writing received in the employing office prior to death;

"Second, if there be no such beneficiary, to the widow or widower of such employee;

"Third, if none of the above, to the child or children of such employee and descendants of deceased children by representation;

"Fourth, if none of the above, to the parents of such employee or the survivor of them;

"Fifth, if none of the above, to the duly appointed executor or administrator of the estate of such employee;

"Sixth, if none of the above, to other next of kin of such employee entitled under the law of domicile of such employee at the time of his death."

On the basis of the third provision of the statute, Ernest Ray Brinson and Laura Brinson Morris filed an action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Their complaint alleged in substance that their father, as insured under the policy, had failed to designate named beneficiaries, that he had died without leaving a widow, and that because of these facts they were entitled to the insurance proceeds. At approximately the same time Clara Brinson filed an action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleging that under the second provision of the statute she was the widow of Ernest Brinson and was entitled to recover the proceeds. Thereafter, Metropolitan, admitting liability to either Ernest Brinson's widow or his children, but not both, deposited the face amount of the policy, together with interest due, with the Registry of the District Court at New Bern, North Carolina, and interpleaded Clara Brinson as party defendant in the North Carolina forum. The Virginia District Court transferred the suit between Clara Brinson and Metropolitan to the Eastern District of North Carolina. With all interested parties before it, the North Carolina District Court, after considering certain stipulated exhibits and facts, determined, as a matter of law, that Clara Brinson was not the widow of Ernest Brinson within contemplation of the statute and hence, was not entitled to the insurance proceeds. It thereupon entered summary judgment in favor of Ernest Ray Brinson and Laura Brinson Morris, and from that judgment Clara Brinson appeals.

Clara Brinson advances two principal arguments before this court: (1) that the divorce decree a mensa et thoro awarded Ernest Brinson had no effect on her right to recover insurance proceeds as his widow, and (2) that her marriage to Paul Willis Landers was entered into under the honest, but mistaken belief that the divorce was absolute and that, therefore, her actions were not so unconscionable as to stay the hand of a court of equity from acting on her behalf.

Preliminarily we find proper federal jurisdiction under the provisions of the federal interpleader statute;³ the value of the policy is in excess of the statutory minimum; and diversity of citizenship exists among adverse claimants. See Haynes v. Felder, 239 F.2d 868 (5 Cir. 1957).

Turning to Clara Brinson's arguments we are faced at the onset with a choice of law problem. Under the Federal Employees' Group Life Insurance Act,⁴ the Government is empowered to procure insurance on behalf of its employees from private insurance carriers. In this activity, the Government acts not as an insurer, but as the procuring agent. Railsback v. United States, 181 F.Supp. 765 (D.Neb.1960). Thus, in the instant case the contract of insurance existed between Ernest Brinson and Metropolitan. The insurance policy, setting forth the terms and conditions of that insurance contract, provided for a priority of payments of death benefits in accordance with provisions in the Act, but did not define the term widow. The Ninth Circuit in Tatum v. Tatum, 241 F.2d 401 (9 Cir. 1957), considered this hiatus and by looking to judicial interpretations of an analogous federal statute, the National Service Life Insurance Act,⁵ determined that the term widow meant lawful widow. In the absence of a congressional pronouncement on the meaning of lawful widow, the court held that it had to look to state law. Faced with three possible states to look to, the court declined to take the final step and decide which of the three state laws governed. The court declined for the reason that the law of all three states was in substance the same. In a case also involving the Federal Employees' Group Life Insurance Act, the Fourth Circuit has taken the final step and has held that the law of an insured's domicile at the time of his death governs. Grove v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., 271 F. 2d 918 (4 Cir. 1959). This resolution of the choice of law problem seems especially appropriate in the present case. Ernest Brinson accepted government employment in North Carolina, the insurance contract was entered into in North Carolina, and it was in North Carolina that he died. Surely North Carolina's interest is obvious in these circumstances and the District Court, sitting in North Carolina, should defer to the law of that state. See Brantley v. Skeens, 105 U.S. App.D.C. 246, 266 F.2d 447 (1959).

But granting that we defer to the law of North Carolina, we find that the statutes of North Carolina have no precise definition of widow, nor have the courts supplied a definition under the factual situation involved in the present dispute.

While it is true that a divorce decree a mensa et thoro does not technically dissolve the bonds of matrimony, nevertheless, the contingent marital rights of a wife separated from her husband under such a divorce decree have been curtailed by a North Carolina statute N.C. Gen.Stat. § 52-20 (1949) provides that:

"If a married woman elopes with an adulterer, or willfully and without just cause abandons her husband and refuses to live with him, and is not living with her husband at his death, or if a divorce from bed and board is granted on the application of the husband, she shall thereby lose all right to dower in the lands and tenements of her husband, and also all right to a year\'s provision, and to a distributive share from the personal property of her husband, and all right to administration on his estate, and also all right and estate in the property of her husband, settled upon her upon the sole consideration of the marriage, before or after marriage; and such elopement may be pleaded in bar of any action, or proceeding, for the recovery of such rights and estates; and in case of such elopement,

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