Suicide notes

12 February 2010 8:00 am

From time to time, one has to deal with some of the consequences for life insurance resulting from a suicide. There is, of course, the emotional fallout for those nearest to the person who committed suicide. In addition, the law rightly takes a close interest in all cases of the deliberate killing of a human being - is the death suicide or something more sinister? If it was suicide, was someone else involved? If so, what are the consequences for that person?

Until 1961, it was a crime for a person to commit suicide but it remains a crime for anyone to aid, abet, counsel or procure the suicide of another and the maximum penalty is imprisonment for 14 years. Suicide is the voluntary act of killing oneself, committed by a person of the age of discretion and of sound mind.

It is a rule of public policy of general application that a person must not be allowed to benefit from his or her own deliberate criminal or otherwise unlawful act.

Before 1961, therefore, the estate of a person who had committed suicide while sane could not benefit from a life insurance contract on that person’s life.

The leading case is Beresford v Royal Insurance which was decided by the House of Lords in 1938. In that case, a Major Rowlandson took out a number of life insurance contracts on his own life for what were then substantial sums of money. Each policy contained an express clause that if the life assured committed suicide within one year of the commencement of the contract, the contract was to be void.

Some years later, Major Rowlandson found that he could not pay a premium. He got an extension of time in which to pay, and a few minutes before the time expired, he shot himself.

The life office refused to pay the sums assured and his estate sued the life office.

At the trial, the jury decided that Major Rowlandson was sane at the time he shot himself. In the House of Lords, Lord Atkin said: “…if there is no express reference to suicide in the policy, two results follow. In the first place, intentional suicide by a man of sound mind, which I will call sane suicide, ignoring the important question of the test of sanity, will prevent the representatives of the assured from recovering.

“On ordinary principles of insurance law, an assured cannot by his own deliberate act cause the event upon which the insurance money is payable. The insurers have not agreed to pay on that happening…In the second place, this doctrine obviously does not apply to insane suicide, if one premises that the insanity in question prevents the act from being in law the act of the assured”.

On the other hand, if there is a clause dealing with suicide (as there was in this case), Lord Atkin said that the rights of the parties must be ascertained from the terms of the contract in accordance with the ordinary rules applicable to the interpretation of contracts.

He said that it was clear that the life office “promised Major Rowlandson that if he in full possession of his senses intentionally killed himself they would pay…the sum assured”.

The Forefeiture Act 1982 gives the court a wide discretion to modify the effect and appli cation of the forfeiture rule, which is defined as the ’rule of public policy which in certain circum - stances precludes a person who has unlaw - fully killed another from acquiring a benefit in consequence of the killing’

But Lord Atkin then said that a further principle applied, namely “that a man is not to be allowed to have recourse to a Court of Justice to claim a benefit from his crime whether under a contract or a gift”.

He therefore decided that as suicide was a crime, the contract could not be enforced by the estate of the deceased. Today, suicide is no longer a crime and so that case would be decided differently - the major’s estate would now be able to recover the sum assured.

It is, however, still a crime to assist someone to commit suicide. What is the effect of that in the case of the assister seeking to recover the sum assured? Take, for example, the common case of a joint-life first-death contract which was taken out to cover a mortgage in the event of the first life assured to die. Can the survivor recover the sum assured if he or she assists the first to commit suicide successfully?

The general principle that a person cannot benefit from his or her own crime would apply and would prevent the assister from recovering the sum assured.

It is not difficult to see that, in many cases, that rule would cause unacceptable hardship. In order to relieve the hardship in appropriate cases, the Forfeiture Act 1982 was passed. This act gives the court a wide discretion to modify the effect and application of the forfeiture rule, which is defined as the “rule of public policy which in certain circumstances precludes a person who has unlawfully killed another from acquiring a benefit in consequence of the killing”.

In order to modify the forfeiture rule in any case, the court has to be satisfied that the justice of the case so requires “having regard to the conduct of the offender and of the deceased and to such other circumstances as appear to the court to be material”.

The operation of the Forfeiture Act is illustrated by the very sad case of Dunbar v Plant which went to the Court of Appeal in 1997.

This concerned a suicide pact between fiancées in which only the man died. The survivor made further unsuccessful attempts to kill herself but she failed and survived. The couple had bought a house in their joint names and had effected two life insurance contracts, one on the man’s life for the benefit of the woman and the other was charged to the building society which held the mortgage.

The father of the man who died claimed that the survivor should not be entitled to either the house, which under normal circumstances would have become hers, or the life policies, because of her criminal complicity in the man’s suicide.

The Court of Appeal, by a majority, decided that, in the circumstances, she should be fully relieved of the consequences of her criminal participation in her fiancée’s death.

Lord Justice Phillips said, in relation to the crime of aiding and abetting suicide, the prosecution of which requires the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions: “Where the public interest requires no penal sanction, it seems to me that strong grounds are likely to exist for relieving the person who has committed the offence from all effect of the forfeiture rule”.

He went on to say of suicide pacts: “Where two people are driven to attempt, together, to take their lives and one survives, the survivor will normally attract sympathy rather than prosecution.

“A suicide pact may be rational, as where an elderly couple who are both suffering from incurable diseases decide to end their lives together, or it may be the product of irrational depression or desperation.

“In neither case, does it seem to me that the public interest will normally call for either prosecution or forfeiture should one party to the pact survive. In such circumstances, the appropriate approach under the Forfeiture Act 1982 is likely to be to give total relief against forfeiture. Of course, this will not always be the case. One can think of instances of suicide pacts where one would not acquit the instigator of serious culpability.”

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