John Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Dawson
| Decision Date | 19 April 1955 |
| Docket Number | No. 28991,28991 |
| Citation | 278 S.W.2d 57 |
| Parties | JOHN HANCOCK MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, a Corporation, Plaintiff, v. Mary DAWSON and Antoinette Dawson, Defendants, Mary Dawson, Defendant-Respondent, Antoinette Dawson, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
Henry C. Lamkin, St. Louis, for plaintiff.
Jack H. Ross, Koenig, Dietz & Mason, William L. Mason, Jr., St. Louis, for appellant.
Frank Coffman, Thos. M. Gioia, St. Louis, for respondent.
Interpleader. John Hancock Hutual Life Insurance Company filed a petition describing itself as an indifferent stakeholder of the proceeds of a policy insuring the life of Thomas Dawson, deceased. Named as defendants and rivals for the fund were Mary and Antoinette Dawson. Thomas Dawson was the husband of Mary for many years. Differences arose. They executed a property settlement. They were divorced a few days afterward. Thomas married Antoinette a few weeks later. Eleven months thereafter he died.
The settlement Thomas and Mary executed embraced a stipulation that the insurance policy 'be turned over' by Mary to Thomas 'along with 2 $50.00 Series 'E' United States Government Bonds.' The only reference in the settlement to the policy or to the bonds is this one. They were immediately delivered to Thomas by Mary. The right to change the beneficiary was reserved to Thomas by the terms of the policy. Mary was beneficiary. One bond was in the name of Thomas and payable to Mary 'on death.' The other was payable to Thomas 'or' Mary. Thereafter the policy and bonds remained in the possession of Thomas or Antoinette until his death. No action of any kind was taken by him to change the beneficiary of the policy or the payee of the bonds. Mary remained the named beneficiary of the policy and the named payee of the bonds when he died, and she so remains at this time.
Answering the petition, Mary and Antoinette each filed pleadings challenging the claim of the other, asserting her own right to the proceeds of the policy, and bringing into issue the ownership of the bonds. Both claimed the bonds. The appropriateness of the pleadings is not questioned and this description suffices in consequence. Mary based her claim on her status as named beneficiary of the policy and as named payee of the bonds. Antoinette pleaded the property settlement, alleging Mary had accepted and retained its benefits and was estopped to deny its burdens. Its burdens, according to her, were relinquishment by Mary of all right ever to claim the proceeds of the policy and bonds, even though Thomas might permit her to remain the beneficiary and the payee until he died, as he did. If the stipulation relating to the policy and bonds warrants this construction, Antoinette is right. For one who accepts the benefits of a contract or settlement is estopped to disaffirm its burdens. Runnels v. Lasswell, Mo.App., 219 S.W. 980, 981; Hartman v. Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co., 192 Mo.App. 271, 182 S.W. 148; Fox v. Windes, 127 Mo. 502, 30 S.W. 323; 31 C.J.S., Estoppel, Secs. 109, 110.
We regard the stipulation as ambiguous and its meaning unascertainable except by construction. Whether we can arrive at its meaning by construction depends on the state of this record and this record is meager. The entire settlement can be examined for aid in determining whether the stipulation was intended by the signatories as a relinquishment by Mary of all right ever to claim the proceeds of the policy and the bonds. Hubbard v. Hubbard, Mo.App., 264 S.W. 422; 7 Mo.Dig., Contracts, k147(3). It was obviously drafted by a legal technician and all stipulations except the one under scrutiny, were expressed in conventional and precise legal phraseology. For illustration, the parties agreed that real estate held by them 'as a tenancy by the entirety,' referred to by its legal description, should be 'conveyed' by Thomas to Mary through a 'straw man chosen' by Mary. Mary was to pay to Thomas $2,000 'for his share in said estate by the entirety.' A judgment for 'temporary alimony and maintenance' was 'to be satisfied.' The court, it was agreed, could 'set an amount' and order Thomas to pay it to Mary 'for support and maintenance of the minor children.' As consideration for all agreements, Mary was to 'relinquish all rights she may have against' Thomas 'for alimony, both temporary and permanent, attorney's fees, court costs, and dower and other statutory rights of every kind she may have in his estate.'
The legalistic arrangements of obligations and rights strike us as quite significant when juxtaposed with the stipulation dealing with the policy and bonds. For the latter is the only one of all the stipulations which is expressed without legal exactitude and the only one which leaves any doubt about its meaning. In all other instances, the parties provided for obligations and relinquishments of rights, and defined them, by employing legal language which was absolute and unequivocal and which anciently had come to possess an accepted and settled signification in law. Adjudged decisions and standard texts have not revealed to us that the words 'turn over' or 'turned over' have ever come to possess any accepted and settled legal signification. We believe therefore that the signatories regarded them and we should regard them in the ordinary or lay sense. In that sense they can be and frequently are employed to denote a variety of actions, each depending for a determination of its significance on clarifying and explanatory evidence. For example, they may indicate a delivery following a sale, a gift, a loan, a bailment for hire, or a delivery for various other purposes which readily come to mind. Certainly they do not import any action which is unique in law or in character and always of the same significance.
Accordingly, we lack a legal formula for measuring their meaning as they stand in the present stipulation, and cannot do so at all unless we are aided by clarifying and explanatory evidence. The record contains no evidence settling their meaning. Some evidence of some aid is present. It is Antoinette's evidence and it militates against her theory. The two witnesses she presented were permitted to testify that Thomas told them he 'intended' to make her beneficiary of the policy. One added that Thomas 'was planning to change it but he never got around to it before he died.' The other stated that Thomas said he 'intended' also to make her payee of the bonds. The competency of this evidence is not questioned by the parties on this appeal. State ex rel. Gneckow v. Hostetter, 340 Mo. 1177, 105 S.W.2d 928. Each argues indeed that it supports an inference in her favor. So we view it as being in the record for whatever it may be worth. Madison v. Taxi Owners Ass'n, Mo.App., 148 S.W.2d 106, 108; DeMoulin v. Roetheli, 354 Mo. 425, 434, 189 S.W.2d 562, 565[3, 4]. If it indicates anything of relevance, it is that Thomas recognized that delivery of the policy and the bonds to him by Mary had given him control of them and the right and opportunity to designate Antoinette as beneficiary and payee. It indicates that Thomas was also aware that Mary was then the payee and the beneficiary and that Antoinette would not be the recipient of the bonds and of the proceeds of the policy if his death came before he made the requisite changes. It does not establish that Thomas construed the stipulation as meaning that Mary would be excluded if he allowed her to remain...
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