Supreme Commandery United Order of the Golden Cross v. Merrick

• Decision Date: 02 April 1895
• Parties: SUPREME COMMANDERY UNITED ORDER OF THE GOLDEN CROSS OF THE WORLD v. MERRICK et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

163 Mass. 374

40 N.E. 183

SUPREME COMMANDERY UNITED ORDER OF THE GOLDEN CROSS OF THE WORLD v. MERRICK et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

April 2, 1895

COUNSEL

Wilbur H. Powers, for plaintiff.

Allin & Mayberry, for defendants.

OPINION HOLMES, J.

This is a bill of interpleader brought by a fraternal order to have it determined to whom shall be paid a fund due under a benefit certificate issued to a member now deceased. It is stated in the bill that, before the issue of the present certificate, another one had been held by the member, in which Nye and others, brothers and sisters of the member and her next of kin, were named as beneficiaries, but that that certificate was surrendered, and the present one issued in its place. The beneficiaries named in the present certificate are Joseph W. and Emma I. Chase. The prayer of the bill is that the first-named beneficiaries, as beneficiaries and next of kin, the second-named beneficiaries, and the administrator of the member may interplead. The Chases demur.

There is nothing in the plaintiff's position to prevent it from maintaining the bill. It has issued two certificates, it is true, by which it promised the member to pay the fund to different persons. But, so far as its relation to the member's administrator is concerned, there is no possibility of its finding itself improvidently committed to two contracts. The second certificate binds it only in case the second certificate is effectually substituted for the first, and the first certificate stands unless the beneficiaries named in the second are persons competent to take. Elsey v. Association, 142 Mass. 224, 226, 7 N.E. 844. Both certificates, although in form different contracts, in that they name different payees, concern the same obligation to pay $2,000, and the obligation would not be void if the only attempted nomination of beneficiaries was invalid. Rindge v. Society, 146 Mass. 286, 288, 15 N.E. 628.

There is no ground for objecting to the bill in the relation of the plaintiff to the beneficiaries. Apart from statute, they are strangers to the contract. The plaintiff does not stand as having attorned successively to the two sets of beneficiaries, as in the case of a bailee who agrees to hold for the purchasers of goods in his possession either after the sale or in advance. It has not issued two independent life policies to the two sets of defendants, as seemed possible in Insurance Co. v. Pingrey, 141 Mass. 411 414, 6 N.E. 93. Compare Pingrey v. Insurance Co., 144 Mass. 374, 383, 11 N.E. 562. Apart from statute and the laws of the company, a member, in naming or changing a beneficiary, simply exercises an equitable right to declare a revocable trust in favor of any one he chooses in respect of a sum of money which the plaintiff has promised to pay. The cestuis que trustent, if they can be said to have a right during the life of the member, claim only through him, and have no immediate relation with the company. The laws of the company, so far as they recognize this right of the member are only declaratory; and neither they nor the certificate naming the beneficiaries, make a subsidiary contract with the latter. If a...