Stanley Forman Reed

“ New York is not the only state with an interest in these questions. New York is merely the sole state whose argument we have heard. The mobility of our population and the complexity of our life create many confusions in which the states may properly look to us for some standard by which they may know what and whom to claim for their own. It seems to me that we should not unnecessarily confound what at best is confusion, by removing the landmarks of state jurisdiction erected by years of trial and error. ”

“ I have never before heard it denied that one, if he makes his intent sufficiently clear, may by migration bring to an end his allegiance to a state and with it the state's sovereignty over him. But New York's plan requires us to say not only that sovereignty over an insured reaches the property of a third-party beneficiary but that such a consequence follows both parties for life, although the insured may have deliberately acquired a new allegiance and become a citizen of another state, and the beneficiary may never have been in New York. ”

“ The proceeds to be escheated are held by out-of-the-state insurance companies and by no stretch of imagination are they within New York's dominion. And certainly residence of the insured at the time the policy issued cannot generate constructive possession of either the beneficiary's claim or the actual proceeds at maturity or at the time of abandonment.
Second, sovereignty over the person, as a resident or citizen, will justify the state in stepping into his shoes as claimant of abandoned property. Our federal form of government presupposes a dual allegiance. ”