Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 7.djvu/628

 616 FEDERAL REPOfiTER. �in favor of some other person, or use or assigu it as a means of credit or security, or discontinue payment of the premiums and let the policy lapse, or that he might bequeath or assign the beneficiai interest in the policy as he should think proper. It must, therefore, be said of this case that it follows in the track of Clark v. Durand. �The latest enuuciation of the supreme court of this state on the subject is found in Poster v. Gile, 3 Wis. Legal News, 87.* In this case the person insured had procured a policy insuring his life for the benefit of two chUdren. The father survived the children and died intestate, leaving a widow surviving him, and the question was whether the proceeds of the insurance belonged to the estate of the children or to the estate of the father. It was held that the beneficiai interest of the children did not lapse by their deatb, but passed to their administrator to be distributed as intestate estate of such children. From the opinion of Mr. Justice Lyon it is evi- dent that the court were not satisfied with the rule laid down in Clark v. Durand', and, though it is said that the rule must be adhered to, the learned justice, speaking for the majority of the court, expresses the opinion that there is a middle ground upon which the judgments in Clark v. Durand and Kerman v. Howard may rest, which, is that the taking of a policy by the insured, payable to another, is so far in the nature of an executed voluntary settlement that it vests in the person to whom the insurance money is made payable an actual subsisting interest in the policy, but that this interest is subject to the right of the insured to revoke the same, and retain it himself or vest it elsewhere. With great respect for the view thus taken, which really leads to the same resuit as that reached in Clark v. Durand, I am constrained to think that in such a case there must either be an actual vested inter- est or right in the beneficiary named in the policy, which the insured cannot of his independent volition take away, or no vested interest or right whatever; for the existence of a subsisting vested interest in the beneficiary seems incon- �*See, also, 8 N. W. Rep. 217. ��� �