An insured under a policy of National Service Life Insurance who
had designated his father as sole beneficiary, died in active
service in July, 1945. Five months later, the father died, and four
years later, the father's second wife (the insured's stepmother)
died. Neither had received any part of the policy's proceeds. The
insured's natural mother survived. The District Court found that
the stepmother had stood
in loco parentis to the insured
for at least one year prior to his entry into active service, and
also that, within the meaning of § 602(h)(3)(C) of the
National Service Life Insurance Act, both the stepmother and the
natural mother "last bore" the parental relationship to the
insured.
Held:
1. Installments of the proceeds of the policy which, though
accrued, had not been received by a beneficiary prior to his death,
cannot be awarded to the estate of such deceased beneficiary, since
§ 602(i) conditions payments on the beneficiary's being alive
to receive them. Pp.
344 U. S.
69-76.
2. The insured's natural mother is a surviving beneficiary
entitled to take by devolution under § 602(h)(3)(C) of the
Act. Pp.
344 U. S.
76-78.
(a) The finding that the stepmother "last bore" the parental
relationship to the insured, within the meaning of §
602(h)(3)(C), does not preclude a finding that the insured's
natural mother also "last bore" that relationship. Pp.
344 U. S.
76-77.
(b) This Court accepts what the courts below deemed a continuing
parental relationship between the insured and his natural mother.
Pp.
344 U. S.
77-78.
(c) Since the insured's natural mother is a surviving
beneficiary entitled to take by devolution under §
602(h)(3)(C), she is the "beneficiary to whom payment is first
made," within the meaning of § 602(h)(1) and (2). Pp.
344 U. S.
77-78.
3. Since there is a surviving beneficiary entitled to take by
devolution under § 602(h)(3)(C), the Government may not
invoke
Page 344 U. S. 67
the provisions of § 602(j) to withhold, for the benefit of
the National Service Life Insurance Fund, payment of the
installments accrued from the date of the insured's death. P.
344 U. S.
78.
191 F.2d 588 reversed.
In an action for a judicial determination of the proper
beneficiary under a policy of National Service Life Insurance, the
District Court divided the proceeds among three parties. 93 F.
Supp. 380. The Court of Appeals agreed. 191 F.2d 588. This Court
granted certiorari. 342 U.S. 917.
Reversed, p.
344 U. S.
78.
MR. JUSTICE CLARK delivered the opinion of the Court.
Conflicting claims to the proceeds of a policy of National
Service Life Insurance frame the controversy before us. Disposition
of the cause depends on our interpretation of the National Service
Life Insurance Act of 1940, as amended, 38 U.S.C. § 801
et
seq., which, in pertinent part, [
Footnote 1] provides:
"§ 602(g). The insurance shall be payable only to a widow,
widower, child . . . , parent, brother or sister of the insured.
The insured shall have the right to designate the beneficiary or
beneficiaries of the insurance, but only within the classes herein
provided. . . . "
Page 344 U. S. 68
"§ 601(f). The terms 'parent,' 'father,' and 'mother'
include a father, mother, father through adoption, mother through
adoption, [and] persons who have stood
in loco parentis to
a member of the military or naval forces at any time prior to entry
into active service for a period of not less than one year. . .
."
"§ 602(i). If no beneficiary is designated by the insured
or if the designated beneficiary does not survive the insured, the
beneficiary shall be determined in accordance with the order
specified in subsection (h)(3) of this section, and the insurance
shall be payable in equal monthly installments in accordance with
subsection (h). . . . The right of any beneficiary to payment of
any installments shall be conditioned upon his or her being alive
to receive such payments. No person shall have a vested right to
any installment or installments of any such insurance and any
installments not paid to a beneficiary during such beneficiary's
lifetime shall be paid to the beneficiary or beneficiaries within
the permitted class next entitled to priority, as provided in
subsection (h). . . ."
"§ 602(h)(3). Any installments certain of insurance
remaining unpaid at the death of any beneficiary shall be paid in
equal monthly installments in an amount equal to the monthly
installments paid to the first beneficiary, to the person or
persons then in being within the classes hereinafter specified and
in the order named, unless designated by the insured in a different
order --"
"
* * * *"
"(C) if no widow, widower, or child, to the parent or parents of
the insured who last bore that relationship, if living, in equal
shares. . . . "
Page 344 U. S. 69
"602(j). No installments of such insurance shall be paid to the
heirs or legal representatives as such of the insured or of any
beneficiary, and in the event that no person within the permitted
class survives to receive the insurance or any part thereof, no
payment of the unpaid installments shall be made. . . ."
The material facts are not disputed. Eugene C. Henning, a Naval
Reservist insured under a $10,000 term policy of National Service
Life Insurance which named his father as sole beneficiary,
[
Footnote 2] died on July 4,
1945, in his country's service. Otto F. Henning, the father, died
five months later, without having received any part of the policy's
proceeds. Bessie, his second wife and the insured's stepmother, and
Clara Belle, his former wife and the insured's natural mother,
survived. Both survivors subsequently filed claims to the proceeds
of the serviceman's policy. On June 30, 1949, during the pendency
of an interpleader action for a judicial determination of the
proper taker, Bessie died, leaving the natural mother as sole
surviving claimant. The Government thereupon asserted that Bessie
had last borne the parental relationship to the insured; that
consequently Clara Belle could not come within the statutory class
of devolutionary takers, and that, in the absence of cognizable
claims to the proceeds, they escheat to the National Service Life
Insurance Fund.
The District Court's judgment, however, divided the proceeds,
payable in installments, among three parties. [
Footnote 3] The court read the statute as imposing
no bar to the
Page 344 U. S. 70
award of matured but unpaid installments to the estates of
deceased beneficiaries. It therefore awarded to the father's estate
the installments which had matured during his lifetime but remained
unpaid. And, finding that Bessie, the stepmother, had stood
in
loco parentis to the insured for at least one year prior to
his entry into active service, it concluded that both she and Clara
Belle, the natural mother, were parents who "last bore that
relationship," and thus qualified to take the remaining proceeds by
devolution under § 602(h)(3)(C) of the Act. The installments
which had matured during the stepmother's lifetime were shared
equally between her estate and Clara Belle; installments thereafter
maturing were awarded to the latter alone.
The Court of Appeals agreed. [
Footnote 4] Conceding that the literal wording of the
statute went "a long way" toward sustaining the Government's
opposing contentions, the court, fearful of unfortunate
consequences that might flow from strict adherence to the text of
the Act, nevertheless ruled that estates of deceased beneficiaries
might take. And, noting its disagreement with the Second Circuit's
ruling in
Baumet v. United States, [
Footnote 5] it further held that one
in loco
parentis who qualified as a beneficiary under §
602(h)(3)(C) of the Act did not necessarily exclude from
participation in policy proceeds a natural parent of the same sex
who also "last bore" the parental relationship to the insured.
We granted certiorari to settle problems important in the
administration of the National Service Life Insurance
Page 344 U. S. 71
Act and to resolve conflicting statutory interpretations by the
Courts of Appeals. 342 U.S. 917.
Congress, through war risk insurance legislation, has long
sought to protect from financial hardship the surviving families of
those who had served under the nation's flag. Comprehensive
insurance programs enacted in 1917, 1940, and 1951 reflect this
consistent legislative concern in times of crisis. Since public
funds were to meet a large part of the programs' cost, [
Footnote 6] the statutes closely
circumscribed the class of permissible takers to preclude those not
the object of congressional concern from draining the treasury when
hazards of war service multiplied policy maturities. The War Risk
Insurance Act of 1917 enumerated only the serviceman's spouse and
immediate blood relatives as permissible beneficiaries of policy
proceeds; [
Footnote 7] a
beneficiary's interest was extinguished by death. [
Footnote 8] The National Service Life
Insurance Act of 1940, again constricting the class of permissible
takers, [
Footnote 9] restates
the legislative purpose of the prior Act. In the Servicemen's
Indemnity Act of 1951, the previous restrictions once more appear,
reiterated in a flat proviso: "no payment shall be made to the
estate of any deceased person." [
Footnote 10] Accenting these wartime limitations is the
liberalizing legislation by which Congress, after cessation of
hostilities in World Wars I and II, placed its insurance programs
on more nearly a commercial basis. Amendments
Page 344 U. S. 72
to the War Risk Insurance Act in 1919 expanded the permitted
beneficiary class to include more distant relatives of the insured,
and, significantly, provided that installments payable but unpaid
upon a beneficiary's death might go to his estate. [
Footnote 11] This broadening legislation
was substantially reenacted in the World War Veterans' Act of 1924.
[
Footnote 12] And after
World War II, Congress, in 1946, once more liberalized the benefits
of the National Service Life Insurance Act. As to policies maturing
after August, 1946, it removed the restrictions on the insured's
choice of beneficiary, and in certain instances permitted the
payment of installment proceeds to deceased beneficiaries' estates.
[
Footnote 13] From this
course of legislation, an unmistakable pattern of congressional
policy emerges: statutes enacted in time of war crisis narrow the
range of beneficiaries; post-war legislation broadens it. [
Footnote 14]
Section 602 of the N.S.L.I. Act of 1940, governing the
distribution of the policy proceeds here in controversy, must take
meaning from its historical setting.
Cf. 334 U.
S. S. 73� States v. Zazove,@
334 U.
S. 602 (1948). Subsection (i) conditions the right of a
beneficiary to the payment of any installments "upon his or her
being alive to receive such payments;" it adds that
"No person shall have a vested right to any installment . . . ,
and any installments not paid to a beneficiary during such
beneficiary's lifetime shall be paid to the beneficiary or
beneficiaries . . . next entitled to priority. . . ."
And subsection (j), so as to disclaim any possible analogy to
prior peacetime legislation which at one time had been construed to
confer such rights, [
Footnote
15] emphasizes that "No installments of such insurance shall be
paid to the heirs or legal representatives as such . . . of any
beneficiary." On the contrary, the subsection directs,
"in the event that no person within the permitted class survives
to receive the insurance or any part thereof, no payment of the
unpaid installments shall be made."
In the face of this clear statutory language, we are
nevertheless urged to distinguish installments neither accrued nor
paid from accrued installments that an intended beneficiary for
some reason has not received. Whereas
Page 344 U. S. 74
the former concededly may not pass to the estate of a deceased
beneficiary, it is argued that the latter may. For to hold
otherwise, the argument runs, might result in "amazing
consequences;" the government, for example, by simply withholding
payments until one beneficiary died, might unjustly enrich another
in a lower priority, or, if none survived, favor the public purse;
moreover, a low priority beneficiary, by litigating a specious
claim, might profitably suspend payment until the higher priority
takers died.
We reject the conclusion and its premises. The asserted
distinction assumes that, when Congress, in § 602(i),
conditioned payment to beneficiaries on their "being alive to
receive such payments," it meant something else; that exempted,
without words or other indication, installments accrued but not yet
paid. But to read such language into subsection (i) strips it of
significance; if limited in application to unmatured installments,
the strictures of that subsection would be mere surplusage,
forbidding what the priority ladder of § 602(h)(3), in any
event, could not logically permit. We cannot so nullify the clear
import of subsection (i). In drafting the 1940 statute, Congress
must have been fully cognizant of insurance legislation of the
prior war. The 1917 War Risk Insurance Act was well understood to
prohibit payment of accrued installments to the estates of
beneficiaries who did not live to take their intended shares;
[
Footnote 16] the very
contention made here today was then examined and rejected.
[
Footnote 17] No peacetime
amendments, as those which, in
Page 344 U. S. 75
1919 and 1924, specifically altered the deliberate wartime
result, can aid the contention presented today. [
Footnote 18] The conclusion is irresistible
that, when in 1940 the law conditioned payments on the
beneficiary's being alive to receive them, Congress said what it
meant and meant what it said. Were more needed, the consistent
course of administrative practice under the Acts of 1917 and 1940
applied the statutes to bar payments to deceased beneficiaries'
estates; [
Footnote 19] that
factor, too, must be accorded weight.
United States v. Zazove,
supra; United States v. Citizens Loan & Trust Co.,
316 U. S. 209
(1942);
United States v. Madigan, 300 U.
S. 500 (1937). We are not unmindful of the fact that
unanticipated delay in the payment of policy proceeds may withhold
from a beneficiary the funds that Congress intended him to get;
seven years and three deaths have not yet brought this litigation
to an end. But we cannot apportion the blame for this cruel delay.
And we may surely not speculate that the officials entrusted with
the administration of the Act would attempt to enrich other
beneficiaries or the treasury itself by a sardonic waiting
game.
We conclude that, in this crisis legislation, Congress, fully
aware of the sometimes inevitable delays in payment,
Page 344 U. S. 76
preferred the occasionally harsh result to a course of action
which would permit funds intended for living members of the narrow
statutory class of permissible takers to seep down to an enlarged
class of sub-beneficiaries created not by the Act itself, but by
intended beneficiaries' testamentary plans. Courts may not flout so
unmistakable a legislative purpose, expressed in so clear a
congressional command.
United States v. Citizens Loan &
Trust Co., supra; Wissner v. Wissner, 338 U.
S. 655 (1950). We hold that the award of accrued
installments to the estates of deceased beneficiaries cannot
stand.
There remains the controversy between the natural mother and the
United States. The Government contends that, because Bessie, the
stepmother, had stood
in loco parentis to the insured at
the time of his death, she was the material parent "who last bore
that relationship" within the meaning of § 602(h)(3)(C);
consequently Clara Belle, the natural mother, despite a District
Court finding that she, too, "last bore that relationship," was
displaced and forever lost any right to take by devolution under
the Act. In essence, the argument is that no more than one parent
of each sex may contemporaneously meet the test imposed by the Act;
the "last" parent takes all, to the exclusion of others. And since
the "last" parent is now dead, no one may take.
We cannot agree. While the contention has the merit of
simplicity, simplicity cannot supplant statutory interpretation.
Section 602(h)(3)(C), too, has a historical setting. The National
Service Life Insurance Act, as enacted in 1940, confined the class
of devolutionary takers to the spouse and blood relatives of the
insured. [
Footnote 20] So
written,
Page 344 U. S. 77
the legislation proved unsatisfactory in practice. As construed,
that provision required payment of proceeds to an insured's natural
parents though they had abandoned him to be raised and supported
wholly by foster parents, the latter being excluded from
participation by the Act. [
Footnote 21] Upon recommendation of the Veterans'
Administrator, Congress, in 1942, amended the Act to foreclose that
result. Persons who stood
in loco parentis to the insured
for at least one year prior to his entry into active military
service were included within the Act's definition of "parent." And
they qualified as takers by devolution if they "last bore that
relationship" to the insured, [
Footnote 22] an essential statutory condition to preclude
the parceling out of proceeds among a series of transient hosts and
to assure full benefits to those most likely to merit the insured's
financial support. The thrust of the amendment thus was directed at
the inclusion of worthy foster parents, not the exclusion of
natural parents however deserving.
It may well be that ordinarily a foster relationship does not
begin until natural parental ties, realistically viewed, are
severed; if so, the foster parent bears the parental relationship
when the natural parent has ceased to be such in truth and fact.
And, in that case, the clear intent of the 1942 amendments would
demand the exclusion of the natural parent from participation in
the proceeds. But since that determination, based on realties, not
status, necessarily must depend on the facts of a particular case,
it is peculiarly within the competence of others who are closer to
the living facts. Here, the District Court found that the parental
relationship continued
Page 344 U. S. 78
until the insured's death, and the Court of Appeals observed
that
"there is no finding or evidence of any estrangement, to say
nothing of abandonment, or even any lack of parental feeling,
between [the insured] and his mother, Clara Belle. [
Footnote 23]"
Unable to freeze into formula the subtle family relations that
may constitute a genuine parental bond, we must accept what the
courts below deemed a continuing parental relationship between
mother and son.
Since we hold that Clara Belle Henning, the insured's natural
mother, is a surviving beneficiary entitled to take by devolution
under § 602(h)(3)(C), the Government may, of course, not
invoke the provisions of § 602(j) to withhold, for the benefit
of the National Service Life Insurance Fund, payment of the
installments accrued from the date of the insured's death. It
equally follows that the method of distribution of installments to
Clara Belle, as "the beneficiary to whom payment is first made,"
must depend on her age at the date of policy maturity, subject to
her election of an optional settlement as provided by §
602(h)(1) and (2) and applicable administrative regulations under
the Act. [
Footnote 24]
Reversed.
[
Footnote 1]
In 1946, the Act was amended prospectively in several material
respects. 60 Stat. 781
et seq. Since the policy before us
matured in 1945, the 1946 amendments do not govern the distribution
of the proceeds here in issue.
[
Footnote 2]
The insured at one time had designated his wife as beneficiary
and his father as contingent beneficiary. Subsequently, he properly
changed this designation and named his father as sole beneficiary.
The marriage was dissolved prior to the insured's death. The
earlier designation is thus not material here.
[
Footnote 3]
93 F. Supp. 380 (1950).
[
Footnote 4]
191 F.2d 588 (1951). The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded
for proper computation of the installments which it found due the
various parties. In view of our disposition of the case, we are not
now concerned with that part of its holding.
[
Footnote 5]
191 F.2d 194 (1951),
cert. granted, 343 U.S. 925,
decided this day,
post, p.
344 U. S. 82.
[
Footnote 6]
E.g., § 403, W.R.I.A. of 1917, 40 Stat. 410;
§ 602
et seq., N.S.L.I. Act of 1940, 38 U.S.C. §
802
et seq.; see United States v. Zazove, 334 U.
S. 602,
334 U. S. 616
(1948); Servicemen's Indemnity Act of 1951, 38 U.S.C.(Supp. V)
§ 851
et seq.; S.Rep.No.91, 82d Cong., 1st Sess.;
H.Rep.No.6, 82d Cong., 1st Sess.
[
Footnote 7]
§ 402, 40 Stat. 409.
[
Footnote 8]
Cassarello v. United States, 271 F. 486;
Salzer v.
United States, 300 F. 764.
[
Footnote 9]
§ 602(g), 38 U.S.C. § 802(g).
[
Footnote 10]
§ 3, 38 U.S.C.(Supp. V) § 852.
[
Footnote 11]
§§ 4, 13, 19, 41 Stat. 371, 375, 376.
[
Footnote 12]
§§ 3, 26, 43 Stat. 607, 614, 38 U.S.C. §§
424, 451.
[
Footnote 13]
§§ 4, 9, 60 Stat. 782, 785, 38 U.S.C. §§
802(g, u).
[
Footnote 14]
As to the 1946 amendments,
see testimony of Mr. Harold
W. Breining, Assistant Administrator for Insurance, Veterans'
Administration, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Insurance of
the Committee on World War Veterans' Legislation, House of
Representatives, 79th Cong., 2d Sess., on H.R. 5772 and H.R. 5773
(p. 1):
"The fundamental reasons for liberalization are that, during the
war, the bulk of losses all came from the National Treasury.
Through this method, the Government assumed the losses due to the
extra hazards of military and naval services. Since the Government
during the war bore the major part of the losses, it was not felt
that the Government would want to pay, indirectly through this
channel, large sums of money to persons who might be beneficiaries
only because of some speculation, or because the insured might wish
to give it to them, as distinguished from persons who were likely
to be dependent or to whom the insured might owe some semblance of
a moral obligation. These restrictions originally were placed in
the law with the clear intent that they would be eliminated when
the period of emergency was over."
For Congressional attitudes in enacting the W.R.I.A. of 1917,
see, e.g., 55 Cong.Rec. 6761, 7690, and H.R.Rep. No. 130,
Pt. 3, p. 5, 65th Cong., 1st Sess. The legislative history of the
1940 Act contains little expression of congressional intent. The
Act was presented while a controversial revenue measure was under
consideration. The Committee reports accompanying the revenue bill
of which the N.S.L.I. Act became part contain no reference to the
insurance legislation. A Conference Committee Report devoted less
than a page to the Insurance Act.
See H.R.Rep.No.2894,
S.Rep.No.2114, H.R.Rep. No. 3002, all of the 76th Cong., 3d
Sess.
[
Footnote 15]
McCullough v. Smith, 293 U. S. 228
(1934);
cf. United States v. Citizens Loan & Trust
Co., 316 U. S. 209
(1942); both cases involving the 1925 amendments to the World War
Veterans' Act. 43 Stat. 1310, 38 U.S.C. § 514.
[
Footnote 16]
Treasury Dept., Bureau of War Risk Insurance, Division of
Military and Naval Insurance, Bulletin No. 1, p. 4 (1917);
Cassarello v. United States, 271 F. 486 (1919).
[
Footnote 17]
24 Comp.Dec. 733 (1918);
cf. American National Bank &
Trust Co. v. United States, 77 U.S.App.D.C. 243, 134 F.2d 674
(1943);
United States v. Lee, 101 F.2d 472 (1939), which
interpreted 38 U.S.C. § 516, providing for reinstatement of
lapsed World War I policies, as forbidding the payment of
installments to the estates of deceased beneficiaries. These
holdings turned on the section's enumeration of a restricted class
of permissible takers; estates of deceased persons were held not to
fall within that class. The pertinent terms of that enactment are
almost identical with portions of §§ 602(g) and (h) of
the National Service Life Insurance Act we must construe today.
[
Footnote 18]
Since this policy matured in 1945, we are not here concerned
with whatever effects the 1946 amendments to the National Service
Life Insurance Act might have on this or similar cases.
[
Footnote 19]
See 24 Comp.Dec. 733 (1918); Bulletin,
note 16 supra; Communication to
the Solicitor General of the United States from the Solicitor,
Veterans' Administration, dated March 12, 1952, reprinted as
Appendix B, Brief for the United States.
[
Footnote 20]
§§ 602(g) and (h)(3)(C), 54 Stat. 1010. The insured,
however, was permitted to designate persons
in loco
parentis as beneficiaries.
[
Footnote 21]
S.Rep.No.1430, 77th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 2; H.R.Rep.No.2312, 77th
Cong.2d Sess., p. 4.
Cf. S.Rep.No.91, 82d Cong., 1st
Sess., p. 12; H.R.Rep. No. 6, 82d Cong., 1st Sess., p. 14.
[
Footnote 22]
§§ 7 to 9, 56 Stat. 659, 38 U.S.C. §§
801(f), 802(g), and (h)(3)(C).
Cf. § 3 of the
Servicemen's Indemnity Act of 1951, 38 U.S.C. (Supp. V) §
852.
[
Footnote 23]
191 F.2d at 593.
[
Footnote 24]
38 U.S.C. § 802(h)(1) and (2); 38 CFR (1944 Supp.) §
10.3475
et seq., applicable to this policy which matured
in 1945.
MR. JUSTICE BURTON, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE joins,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with the opinion and the judgment of the Court insofar
as it holds that no installments may be paid to the legal
representatives of the estates of the respective deceased
beneficiaries. However, I feel obliged to conclude that, within the
meaning of the Act, only the natural father and the foster mother
of the insured
last
Page 344 U. S. 79
bore to him at the time of his death, the relationship of
parents. That
last relationship was then to the exclusion
of everyone, even to the exclusion of his natural mother.
Consequently, upon the death of those two persons who
last
bore the relationship of parent to the insured, there remained no
person entitled under the terms of the Act to receive any of the
proceeds as a contingent beneficiary. Accordingly, the proceeds
should be withheld for the benefit of the National Service Life
Insurance Fund.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON, whom MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER joins,
dissenting.
Perhaps a halfhearted dissent, like an extemporaneous speech, is
only worth the paper it is written upon. We do no more than point
out that we would prefer a more benign construction of these
complex statutes which would be equally reasonable.
The problem is of that recurring sort well described by Judge
Learned Hand as follows:
"The issue involves the baffling question which comes up so
often in the interpretation of all kinds of writings: how far is it
proper to read the words out of their literal meaning in order to
realize their overriding purpose? It is idle to add to the acres of
paper and streams of ink that have been devoted to the discussion.
When we ask what Congress 'intended,' usually there can be no
answer if what we mean is what any person or group of persons
actually had in mind. Flinch as we may, what we do, and must do, is
to project ourselves, as best we can, into the position of those
who uttered the words, and to impute to them how they would have
dealt with the concrete occasion. He who supposes that he can be
certain of the result is the least fitted for the attempt."
United States v. Klinger, 199 F.2d 645, 648.
Page 344 U. S. 80
The literal language of Congress in 38 U.S.C. § 802(i) we
would read with emphasis as follows:
"The
right of any beneficiary to payment of any
installments shall be conditioned upon his or her being
alive
to receive such payments."
This, on our reading, says that a beneficiary's claim to an
installment is matured, and his right is perfected, when the
installment becomes due and he is alive to receive it, whether or
not he then actually reduces it to possession. Under the Court's
construction, no "right" to an installment comes into existence
until the claimant has actually received payment. On that event, we
would think he would cease to have the "right." It is not clear
what the Court would do about the case where a check was sent to
pay the claim and the claimant died while it was in the mails or
after he had received the check, but before it was actually
presented for payment. But, to us, this language means that
installments accrue to a beneficiary when they fall due during his
lifetime, and thereupon become his of right.
We do not read § 802(j) as taking away what § 802(i)
grants. It may be read with this emphasis:
"No installments of such insurance shall be paid to the heirs or
legal representatives
as such of the insured or of any
beneficiary. . . ."
Just what "as such" adds or subtracts may be debated, but, to
us, the phrase, if it is to have any significance in this context,
means that payments cannot
accrue to an administrator or
executor, because a personal representative,
as such,
cannot become a beneficiary. But it does not mean that the personal
representative cannot collect installments which had become the
"right" of decedent during his lifetime.
This construction would avoid what the Court admits is a harsh
and capricious result. It seems strange, in dealing with a bereaved
beneficiary, if our Government makes a promise to the ear to be
broken to the hope. Under the Court's view, though the beneficiary
is alive
Page 344 U. S. 81
to receive the payment, and therefore has the statutory "right"
to it, any event that delays its actual payment may cancel his
"right." By an adverse claim, however fictitious, or a litigation,
however frivolous, a junior beneficiary may delay payments and
gamble on winning them for himself through death of the senior
beneficiary. Some period of waiting is inevitable in the settlement
of claims in any event, and we all know the tendency of claim
papers to shuffle back and forth between Washington desks while
time, which means little to the administrative staff, means
everything to the claimant. We would not put upon beneficiaries all
risks caused by delay, and thus make their statutory rights as
contingent as lottery tickets. Beneficiaries of this class are
often dependents, left in urgent need by death of the insured. When
red tape or litigiousness delays the promised income, should not
the beneficiary, while waiting to hear from Washington, have a firm
right to accrued installments on which he or his estate could
depend? The reasoning that would deny the asset to the estate may
also deny the needy beneficiary credit.
We do not think that the Court's admittedly harsh result is the
fairest permissible interpretation of this statute. We would allow
the estate of a beneficiary to recover payments that fall due while
the beneficiary is alive to receive them. On this point alone, do
we dissent.