The Coordination of Interests between the Insured's Creditors and the Beneficiary in Life Insurance for Others

The subject matter of the judgment is a case in which a policyholder, while incurring a loan debt to a third party, designated his heirs as beneficiaries when signing up for “life insurance for others,” and after the policyholder died and the heirs received the insurance money, they made a qualified acceptance of the inheritance, and the creditor of policyholder demanded performance of the loan debt from the heirs. In this regard, “the Lower Court” ruled that since the heirs’ right to claim insurance money was considered ‘inherited property’ inherited from the deceased, and the heirs made a disposition to receive the insurance money, which resulted in a statutory simple acceptance, the heirs are responsible for repaying the loan to the creditors of policyholder. However, “the Supreme Court” ruled that such insurance claim rights are already vested in the heirs as ‘proper property’ and therefore are not positive property subject to qualified acceptance, so even if they are omitted from the list of inherited properties, the qualified acceptance is valid, and therefore the heirs are not responsible for paying the loan to the creditors of the policyholder, and the Supreme Court overturned the Lower Court’s decision with a unanimous opinion of justices, In this paper, in order to achieve the purpose of studying conflicts of interest in life insurance for others, the discussion is centered on the following three issues. First, in the case where the policyholder designates the heir as the beneficiary in a life insurance for another person, I examined whether the essential nature of the “person with insurance claim right” is ‘inherited property’ or ‘proper property’ through a comparative review with foreign legislative examples or the ‘Inheritance Tax and Gift Tax Act’. Second, I examined what differences the legal nature of an insurance contract for another person has from a “contract for a third party” under the Civil Act, and by applying the theory of civil law, I examined whether the creditor of the policyholder can exercise the act of preserving the liability property such as ‘the creditor’s right of rescission’ or ‘the compulsory execution’ of the right to claim insurance money. Third, I analyzed the fundamental cause of the problem of conflict of interest between “the creditor of the policyholder and the beneficiary” in the life insurance for others, and I derived a reasonable solution after comprehensively examining the purpose and policy considerations of life insurance, the characteristics and functions of insurance with guarantee, and the balance of mutual protection interests between stakeholders.