The civil branch of the jurisprudence of our subject is more complex than the criminal. Life assurance companies naturally object to have to pay sums of money for suicidal deaths, when these are proved to have occurred in persons who have never shown any mental derangement, and who may have had reasons for providing a considerable sum of money for their families, even at the expense of forfeiting their own further concern in this world. Such fraudulent suicides have taken place, just as some men have not hesitated to risk being judicially executed for murder, committed to obtain sums of money and other valuables.

Our English Judges have, unfortunately, not been unanimous in their decisions respecting the forfeiture of insurances by voluntary death; and the assurance companies have further complicated the matter by the insertion of peculiar clauses in their policies, and by using alternative phrases, meaning suicide, which the law courts have held to infer different notions.

It has always been the custom to insert in policies of life assurance the proviso that the death of the assured by suicide should render the policy void. This was understood to mean that felo-de-se voided the policy.

But it became the constant practice of Coroner’s juries to find that persons who had been proved to have destroyed themselves were suffering from “temporary insanity”: they thus avoided a verdict of felo-de-se; hence arose the necessity of an understanding whether or not “Suicide whilst insane” did or did not vitiate a policy. In equity, of course, such a death should not do so, because the death occurs without the voluntary determination of a healthy mind, and no one can contract himself out of the possibility of some day losing his reason.

The difficulty might never have arisen, but for this unfortunate straining of the word insanity to cover all cases of suicide.

On the Continent, in many States, this injudicious mode of regarding suicides does not exist; when madmen kill themselves, their madness is registered; and when persons whom no one has ever noticed to be unable to manage their affairs, and whose mental state has not been disturbed, until they have preferred death to life, on account of some loss or annoyance, their voluntary deaths are registered as such. In those states unseemly squabbles between assurance companies and executors are quite rare.

To dispute and refuse payment, however, was found by the companies not altogether a profitable business, because such cases gave rise to much discussion and more misrepresentation, and the litigating company was apt to be avoided by persons about to choose a company to insure with.

Several cases which appeared to be attempts at fraud have been the subject of investigation in courts of law. See reports of the suits of Borrodaile v. Hunter, 1841; Schwabe v. Clift, 1845; Isett v. The American Insurance Company; and The St. Louis Insurance Company v. Graves.

In the first case, a clergyman jumped off Vauxhall Bridge into the Thames and was drowned; in his case the policy stated that it should be avoided if the assured should “die by his own hands.” At the trial, Erskine, J., told the jury the policy must be void if the deceased jumped into the water, intending to kill himself, and knowing that this action would kill him; he also left it to them to say whether the deceased could, at the time of his death, distinguish right from wrong. The jury became confused, for they found that the deceased threw himself off with intent to destroy himself, and also that he was not capable of deciding right from wrong. The verdict was entered for the defendants, that is, that deceased was felo-de-se. On Appeal, the case was argued before four judges in 1843; they, however, differed in opinion; three judges held that it was felo-de-se, and one that the assured was temporarily insane, and that his death was due to an insane uncontrollable impulse.

This matter in dispute arose again in 1845 in the case of Schwabe v. Clift; the deceased drank sulphuric acid, and died, when clearly insane. The jury returned a verdict of death during insanity, intending thereby to say that the policy should not be void. In this policy the term used was “suicide,” and the judge, Cresswell, held that this word meant felo-de-se. On appeal, this judgment was reversed, the judges again differing; the majority held that the clause meant “intentionally killing himself,” whether in a reasonable state of mind or not; the minority were of opinion that disease of the senses, or the reason, leading to suicide, was not intentional death, nor such as ought to cause a forfeiture.

This decision of the judges was of great importance, and led the companies to alter the wording of their policies, for under the old system any one who in an attack of delirium during a fever, or after an accident, should jump out of a window and kill himself, would thereby forfeit his policy; the public could not put up with this dictum, which if law, is not the equity of the case.

Some companies inserted clauses which provided for compromises of such claims; others definitely stated that any voluntary death should avoid a policy, but reserved to themselves the right to return a part of the policy value, calculated up to the day of death.

At the present time, however, policies, which in theory are avoided by suicide, are almost always practically paid by the companies, in full, or nearly so, unless there be any reason to suspect the existence of a fraudulent intention on the part of the assured.

It may be broadly stated that now, in 1885, the companies have almost all agreed to make assigned policies indisputable.

The following axioms will be found of great value:-

When the assured, being himself beneficially interested in the assurance, dies a felo-de-se, public policy requires that the contract be rendered void. And the same holds good of those who claim under the assured, should he have assigned it, whether for valuable consideration or not. Bunyon, p. 74.

But when the assured is but the nominee of the assurer, and has no beneficial interest in the insurance, neither equity nor public policy require the insurance to be avoided; still, this point has not been judicially fixed. Pope, p. 351.

When the suicide is insane, the policy is not avoided, unless by special condition of the policy. See Horn v. Anglo-Australian Ass. Co.

A condition may be inserted that if the policy be assigned to a third person, and in favour of that assignee or those claiming under him, such shall not be void; and the Courts have decided that the insuring company may be the assignee. See White v. Brit. Emp. Ass. Co. 7 L.R. Equity, 394.

If a condition were inserted that the policy should not lapse, even if the assured killed himself when of sound mind, and when beneficially interested, it would be void in law from public policy.

A condition supporting the insurance, in the event of suicide during insanity, whether the assured were beneficially interested or not, would not be void in law.

A condition, avoiding the policy in case the assured should “commit suicide,” “die by his own hand,” or “perish by his own hand,” includes all cases of voluntary death, whether the person be sane or insane, and whether beneficially interested or not so. See Borrodaile v. Hunter; Clift v. Schwabe; Dufaur v. The Professional Ass. Co.

For more detailed information consult Bunyon, and Pope. (See Bibliographical Index). See also the Appendix.

I pass from life assurance to one or two other questions, which are sometimes raised by the occurrence of suicide. The records of English Law will furnish numerous instances in which the existence of unsoundness of mind is not proved by the fact of subsequent self-destruction.

The point has mostly arisen for argument in cases where it is desired to set aside a marriage, on the ground that suicide quickly following matrimony is evidence that there has been an absence of a sound mind, able to make a marriage contract; or when suicide has immediately followed the making of a will; in these cases also it has been argued that the mere fact that suicide has taken place is proof of mental disease, and conclusive reason for setting such a document aside.

Persons desirous of full information on these topics should consult the reports of the cases here mentioned, viz.:-

McAdam v. Walker, 1 Dow. P.C. 148; in this suit the marriage was upheld, although the bridegroom killed himself the same day.

Burrows v. Burrows, 1 Hagg. Eccles. Rep. 109. In this case the will of the testator, who destroyed himself, was upheld, although the act was committed only three days after signing the will.

In the suit of Chambers v. Queen’s Proctor, 2 Curt. 415, the will was held to be good, although suicide was committed the day after the signature of the will, and notwithstanding that it was proved by evidence that the testator had suffered from delusions three days before death.

Steed v. Calley, 1 Keen, 620, Regina v. Rumball, in 1843, and Regina v. Farley, in 1844, are other instances of the existence of insanity not being held to be proved by subsequent suicide.