The Liberty Group turned to the Northern Cape High Court to compel the executor of a woman’s estate to return the money paid out. Picture: File
Pretoria - The exact time of death of a couple who died in a car accident became the focus of a legal wrangle.
The wife was the beneficiary of her husband’s life insurance policy.
The Liberty Group paid out nearly R1.4 million to the executor of Mrs Becker’s (no first names given) estate.
But then, the insurer got wind that she died at 12.15am on that day and Mr Becker was certified as dead at 3.10am.
Thus, it reasoned, as Mrs Becker died first, she (or her estate, in this case) could not benefit from the policy, as her husband was alive when she died.
Liberty turned to the Northern Cape High Court to compel the executor of the woman’s estate to return the money paid out.
The court noted that when several people died in the same disaster, it might be of importance to establish who died first in order to determine whether one inherited from the other, because a person can inherit from another only if they are alive at the time of the other’s death.
A sergeant testified that when he arrived on the scene at about 12.15am on January 8, 2018, Mrs Becker had been declared dead while Mr Becker was being removed from the vehicle.
He confirmed that Mr Becker was declared dead at 3.10am due to the fact that it took longer to remove his body from the vehicle. His evidence was that the time of certification of death did not equate to the time of death, as certification was done after a body was extracted from a motor vehicle.
A paramedic testified that the vehicle in which the Beckers were travelling was lodged under the truck in which it had been involved in a collision with, and that rubble had fallen on to the driver’s side. His assessment at the scene was that both were deceased upon his arrival.
The first police officer on the scene told the court that she felt Mrs Becker’s pulse and that she was alive at the time.
It was also argued that the woman would not have been exposed to the same force as her husband, as the impact was more towards his side of the vehicle.
According to medical evidence, he would have died immediately.
The court concluded that, on a proper evaluation of the evidence, it could come to no other conclusion then to find that the deaths were not simultaneous, but that Mr Becker had pre-deceased his wife, Mrs Becker.
Mrs Becker had an enforceable right (as beneficiary of her husband’s life policy) that was transmissible to her estate.
Pretoria News