Episode Description
What happens when a life insurance company says you’re not the beneficiary—even though you personally watched your spouse sign the paperwork naming you?
In this episode of It’s No Accident, Tallahassee attorneys Mark Nonni and Jaeson Homola discuss an unusual real-life case involving a widow whose husband had changed the beneficiaries on two life insurance policies shortly before his death. After he passed away, she was shocked to learn that the insurance company claimed it had no record of the change.
Mark and Jaeson explain how digging through the husband’s emails ultimately uncovered signed DocuSign beneficiary forms, why those documents became critical evidence, and what happened when the forms were presented to the insurance company.
The conversation also highlights an important lesson for anyone with life insurance: beneficiary designations and documentation matter. Keeping copies of important insurance and estate-planning records can make an enormous difference when a family is already dealing with the loss of a loved one.
It’s No Accident explores real cases and legal issues involving personal injury, wrongful death, insurance claims, and the rights of Floridians.
Episode Transcript
Jaeson:
All right. We’ve got a review that we just read, and I believe it’s on the screen right now. When we looked at the person who left the review, we were able to determine that this was a client from a case you handled.
When the person’s name came up, you immediately remembered the facts of the case. I remember the case, too. It was a strange case and a very interesting one.
Can you run us through some of the facts of that case and what you were able to do that led to her leaving such a great review for you?
Mark:
Absolutely. Like you said, it definitely came to mind because it was a somewhat unusual case. I haven’t had another one exactly like it that I can recall.
It was also a case that really felt good because it involved a very nice lady going through a difficult time, and we were able to help her out.
First off, I think we both always love when we get good Google reviews from our clients. At the end of a case, we’re always hoping and encouraging clients to leave reviews.
I’m bad about it, too. If I go to a store and somebody says, “Leave me a review,” I’ll say, “I will definitely do that.” Then 10 minutes later, I forget.
Jaeson:
I’m guilty of that, too.
Mark:
Sometimes people say they’ll leave one and end up forgetting, but when we get them, we always love them.
With this case, I’m obviously not going to say her name for confidentiality reasons, but it was unusual and a tough situation.
Basically, this lady’s husband had just died from cancer. He had two life insurance policies that she was positive she was the beneficiary of. But when she went to make a claim under the policies, she was told that she wasn’t the beneficiary.
She was essentially denied.
Jaeson:
As if you don’t have enough to worry about while going through the death of your husband and dealing with everything that comes along with that. Then you call the life insurance company to figure out what’s going on, and they tell you, “We can’t talk to you because you’re nowhere to be found on the policy.”
Mark:
Yeah. It was essentially like that. It was, “Let us look into it.” Then it became, “No, you’re not the beneficiary. Sorry.”
Jaeson:
That’s a bit of a gut punch, too.
I can’t imagine all the things that start running through your head: “What’s going on here? Why am I not the beneficiary of my husband’s life insurance policy?”
Mark:
Even more so because he had these life insurance policies for years, before he ever met his wife, who became our client.
For years, he had someone else listed as the primary beneficiary. Then they met, got married, and had been married for a while when he was diagnosed with cancer.
He was fighting the cancer, and it looked like he was going to do pretty well for a while. Eventually, though, it took a turn for the worse. They took him off chemotherapy and radiation and basically told him he had maybe 30 or 60 days.
At that point, he said, “All right, I need to get my affairs in order. I’ve been meaning to make my wife the primary beneficiary of these two insurance policies. Let me go ahead and do that.”
He called the insurance agent and told them what he wanted to do. They said, “Okay, no problem.”
They sent him the beneficiary change forms for the two policies through DocuSign, which is something pretty much everybody is familiar with at this point.
Our client was incredibly frustrated because she was sitting there with him through all of this.
She told me, “He was on speakerphone. I heard him tell the agent what he wanted to do. The agent said they would email him the forms through DocuSign. I was sitting next to him in bed. He pulled up the emails on his phone, and I watched him go through the steps and sign both DocuSign forms.”
Now the insurance company was telling her they had no record of him ever signing those forms.
She was beside herself. “How could this possibly be the case?”
Jaeson:
It’s one thing to get that gut punch of finding out you’re supposedly not the primary beneficiary of your spouse’s life insurance policy.
But on top of that, you were sitting there and watched the forms get signed. Now the insurance company is essentially telling you, “No, you can’t believe your own eyes. That didn’t happen.”
It’s the ultimate gaslight.
Mark:
Exactly. It was crazy.
Thankfully, she had her husband’s phone and, of course, had the password for it. His email was still on the phone, so she left it with me, and we started digging through it.
I’ll admit, it wasn’t easy to find. The emails were buried in his account, and we had to do some searching.
But eventually we found them.
When you sign something through DocuSign and complete the process, it emails you a copy of the signed document. We found those emails.
Jaeson:
And let me point out that it’s not necessarily his job to have that documentation. You probably should keep that documentation with your life insurance records, but this is literally what the life insurance company does.
They have a file for you. If a change was made, you would think there would be a document in that file showing the change and the signature.
I understand that you had to do some digging to find it, but you would think the life insurance company could press a few buttons, go into the file and say, “Yep, here it is.”
Mark:
That’s what I still don’t understand about what happened.
Before I got involved, our client told me she had been talking to the insurance company. They did something like a 30- or 60-day investigation.
Initially, they looked at the policy and told her, “You’re not the beneficiary.”
Then she told them the same story I just told you about watching her husband sign the forms. They said, “All right, let us investigate.”
They went silent for 30 or 60 days and eventually came back and said, “No, we can’t find anything.”
Then, within a few days of her hiring us, I was digging through her husband’s phone and found the emails.
I’m thinking, “How am I able to find this and you guys can’t? What is going on here?”
Something didn’t seem right.
Eventually, I sent a demand letter to the insurance company showing them both signed forms.
Even then, it wasn’t like they were immediately embarrassed or apologetic. They didn’t say, “Here’s the money. Sorry.”
I think it still took another 30 or 60 days of going back and forth and reviewing everything.
They did finally end up paying.
Even when they paid, I can’t remember exactly how it was phrased, but I remember—
Jaeson:
They tried to make it sound like it was his fault or her fault?
Mark:
Yeah, or almost like it was DocuSign’s fault. They were going to try to blame DocuSign.
If you’re doing something like changing the beneficiary on your life insurance, you have to sign the form and get it back to the life insurance company.
Jaeson:
Sure.
Mark:
If you just signed the form and left it in a drawer at your house and it never got back to the life insurance company, arguably that wouldn’t count.
I remember they made some comment along the lines of, “Well, he signed it, but there was potentially an issue with whether it ever got back to us. But we’re not going to go down that road. We’re willing to go ahead and pay.”
Jaeson:
Oh, give me a break.
What do I have to do? Have a process server serve it on you and then sign under oath that they provided it to you? Come on.
Mark:
Right. Or are you trying to throw DocuSign under the bus? Are you trying to make me sue DocuSign now? Are you trying to say, “We don’t have to pay; DocuSign has to pay”?
I don’t know where they were going with that.
It might have been one of those things that just got thrown out there as a meaningless statement, but I was still surprised.
Once I found those signed forms and sent them to the insurance company, I figured that within a day or two, somebody was going to hand-deliver the checks or overnight them to me.
Jaeson:
They should have been saying thank you for finding the email and bringing it to their attention.
Think about the worst-case scenario. They could have paid the money to the wrong beneficiary. That beneficiary spends all the money. Six months later, your client finds the email, goes to the insurance company and says, “I was the beneficiary on this policy all along. You need to pay me.”
Now they’re in a situation where they may have to pay twice.
Then, of course, they’re going to try to recover the money from the beneficiary they originally paid, but good luck.
Mark:
You’re never getting that money back.
Jaeson:
Exactly. If anything, they should have been thanking you for digging it up.
Actually, they should have been thanking you for doing their job for them.
Mark:
Exactly. Saving them from potentially having to pay the same policy twice.
But there was no thanks.
Jaeson:
For some reason, that doesn’t surprise me.
Mark:
The client was very thankful, which is obviously why she left such a good review for us. The insurance company was not so thankful.
But it was definitely a case where it felt good to be able to help this lady out.
She was having a tough time not only because of the grief of her husband dying, but also because she had mounting bills and everything else that came with it.
Being able to get those insurance policies paid obviously helped a lot.
Jaeson:
And what a relief for her to realize she wasn’t imagining things.
I’m sure at some point she was thinking, “Did I imagine this? Was this a dream? I saw him signing these documents.”
When somebody keeps telling you something didn’t happen, you can start questioning your own reality. You start thinking, “Well, maybe it didn’t happen. I don’t know.”
Mark:
You’re right.
She was pretty adamant about it, but I remember asking her probably three or four times, “Are you sure? Are you sure you saw that?”
Jaeson:
It is kind of hard to believe.
Mark:
Yeah.
Jaeson:
And we won’t say the name of the company, but this was a large company.
Mark:
A huge company.
Jaeson:
One of the ones you see commercials for all the time.
Mark:
Exactly.
You start thinking, “I’ll look into this, but it’s probably going to be for naught.”
Maybe this is a situation where the husband changed the beneficiary and never told her.
Jaeson:
Exactly. You never really know.
Mark:
That was in the back of my mind because the beneficiary had been his son.
So I’m thinking, “All right, maybe he told his wife he was going to change it and then decided he didn’t want to, but didn’t have the guts to tell her.”
Jaeson:
That’s another nice part of the outcome. You were able to validate what she remembered and show her that her husband really did change it. She was the beneficiary, and the insurance company should have paid her the money a long time ago.
Mark:
Right. Absolutely.
