Merillat v. Hooker
Merillat v. Hooker
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the Court:
This is not a case of voluntary conveyance in fraud of creditors. The law respecting such conveyances is well settled. Mellen C. Hooker could not have made a gift of the proceeds of this policy to his wife to defeat his creditors, either before or after suit brought by such creditors. But that is not this case. Here, all the interest Mellen O. Hooker ever had in the proceeds of the insurance policy was a mere expectancy, dependent upon
The fact that the proceeds of the policy were transmitted by the insurance company to Mellen C. Hooker, and turned over by him to the appellee, vested no title to the fund in him. Neither did any title pass from him to the appellee. The conditional title to the fund, vested in appellee by the gift of Lester M. Hooker, became absolute upon his death; and, had Mellen C. Hooker refused to turn the fund over to appellee, she could have enforced its delivery irrespective of any claim of his creditors.
The judgment is affirmed with costs, and it is so ordered.
Affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- MERILLAT v. HOOKER
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- Life Insurance; Fraudulent Conveyances. Where the insured in a policy of life insurance in which his father was named as the beneficiary, but which provided that the insured might change the beneficiary on notice to the insurance company, during his last illness requested his father to see that his mother received the insurance money, to which the father consented, and a check for the insurance from the insurance company, which had received no notice of the change of beneficiary, received by the father after the death of the insured, was delivered by him to the mother, the creditors of the father have no claim against the proceeds of the cheek, the ease not being one of a voluntary conveyance in fraud of creditors.