The Beneficiary Change Signed in Hospice

A woman dying of breast cancer signed a form in a hospice facility changing the beneficiary on her employer group life insurance policy. She named her two sisters and two longtime coworkers. She died nine days later.

Her husband, the prior beneficiary, sued all four of them. He alleged she was too medicated to know what she was doing, that they had turned her against him, and later that her signature was forged. He hired a psychiatrist and two handwriting examiners. The insurance company deposited more than $344,000 into the registry of the federal court and stepped out.

Michael Young represented the four people she named.

What decided it

The case turned on one day, not on a relationship. A notary swore she signed the form in front of him and understood what it did. The form required an eight-digit employer code her sister had no way to obtain, and the decedent supplied it from memory. Four disinterested friends and coworkers described what they had actually seen. In his own deposition, the husband conceded she was capable of handling a financial transaction nine days earlier, admitted no one threatened her, and admitted no one ever kept him out of her room.

The opposing experts were never excluded. The court read them and found they did not matter, because neither could say what happened on the day the form was signed.

The result

Summary judgment on every claim. Capacity, undue influence, forgery, and defamation all dismissed. The trial setting was vacated and the funds were released to the beneficiaries she had named.

W.D. Tex., Austin Division, Cause No. 1:18-cv-1121-RP.

Being named late is not the same as doing something wrong

When a beneficiary designation changes near the end of someone’s life, the people who were removed often treat the change itself as proof of misconduct. It is not. Incapacity and undue influence are proved as of the day the form was signed. Testimony about a difficult marriage, about medication generally, or about who was closer to her does not get there, and neither do experts who never met her. The court read both of the ones hired against these clients and found they could not speak to the only day that mattered.

If you were named on a form and are now being sued over it, the evidence that protects you is ordinary and specific: who witnessed the signing, what the form required the signer to know and produce on her own, and what the people around her actually observed that week. It is also perishable. Gather it early, and do not assume that being sued means the money will end up split.