Section 732.802 of the Florida Statutes is known as the “Florida Slayer Statute.” Subsection (3) provides “that a named beneficiary of a life insurance policy “who unlawfully and intentionally kills … the person upon whose life the policy is issued is not entitled to any benefit …” Moreover, subsection (5) provides that a final judgment of conviction of murder of any degree is conclusive, but in the absence of such a conviction, “the court may determine by the greater weight of the evidence whether the killing was unlawful and intentional for purposes of this section.”
In
The Prudential Ins. Co. of Am. v. Harding, 2016 WL 6568085 (M.D. Fla. Nov. 4, 2016), a court found the claim of self-defense to be enough to avoid application of the
Florida Slayer Statute in a domestic partners death. A physical altercation in February 2015, resulted in the death of one of the partners (the owner of a life insurance policy with a beneficial value of $466,000). The alleged criminal perpetrator was the sole beneficiary of that life insurance policy. The decedent’s sister argued that the surviving partner was ineligible to collect the life insurance benefits under Florida’s Slayer Statute. However, the State Attorney didn’t pursue charges against the surviving partner as it did not believe there was enough evidence to obtain a conviction.
The Circuit Court applied the greater weight of the evidence standard and found that it wasn’t more likely than not that surviving partner acted unlawfully in his actions; and it was just as possible that he acted in self-defense. Accordingly, the court found that Florida’s Slayer Statute didn’t apply and ordered the distribution of the life insurance benefits to the surviving partner.
