Tennessee Disability and Life Insurance Blog
Like most states, Tennessee has a slayer statute that prevents a person who intentionally caused the death of a victim from inheriting personal or real property from the victim’s estate. Codified at Tenn. Code Ann. § 31–1–106, the statute also prevents the killer from recovering life insurance proceeds from the victim, even if the killer was a named beneficiary under the policy. The statute is based on the principle that “a wrongdoer will not be allowed to benefit from his crime.”
Under Tennessee case law, a criminal conviction of first-degree murder will allow a third-party to use the slayer statute in civil court to prevent the killer from receiving property or money from the victim. However, even in the absence of a criminal conviction, a person will not be able to recover from the victim if it is shown by a “preponderance of evidence” that he or she caused the victim’s death.
The preponderance of evidence standard is the evidentiary standard used in civil court, and it is easier to meet than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” evidentiary standard used in criminal court. The differences between the two standards are important. A party challenging the killer’s right to a recovery of life insurance proceeds can successfully invoke the slayer statute in civil court, even if the killer was found not guilty of murder in criminal court.
The slayer statute applies not only to someone who kills, but also, to someone who conspires to kill, or hires someone else to kill. It does not apply to acts of self-defense. For example, if a battered wife kills her husband in self-defense, the slayer statute will not prevent her from recovering proceeds from his life insurance policy.
The slayer statute also does not apply to accidental killings, even if the person who caused the death is at fault. The Supreme Court of Tennessee dealt with this issue in Moore v. State Farm Life Ins. Co (1994). In that case, the victim was killed after her husband lost control of the vehicle. The husband was intoxicated at the time and pled guilty to vehicular homicide.