Tom C. Clark

“ The right of any beneficiary to payment of any installments shall be conditioned upon his or her being alive to receive such payments. No person shall have a vested right to any installment or installments of any such insurance and any installments not paid to a beneficiary during such beneficiary's lifetime shall be paid to the beneficiary or beneficiaries within the permitted class next entitled to priority, as provided in subsection (h) * * *.'
s 602 (h) (3) . ”

“ In the face of this clear statutory language we are nevertheless urged to distinguish installments neither accrued nor paid from accrued installments that an intended beneficiary for some reason has not received. Whereas the former concededly may not pass to the estate of a deceased beneficiary, it is argued that the latter may. For to hold otherwise, the argument runs, might result in 'amazing consequences'; the government, for example, by simply withholding payments until one beneficiary died might unjustly enrich another in a lower priority, or, if none survived, favor the public purse ”

“ But since that determination, based on realties, not status, necessarily must depend on the facts of a particular case, it is peculiarly within the competence of others who are closer to the living facts. ”

“ The insured shall have the right to designate the beneficiary or beneficiaries of the insurance, but only within the classes herein provided * * *.' s 601 (f) . 'The terms 'parent', 'father', and 'mother' include a father, mother, father through adoption, mother through adoption (and) persons who have stood in loco parentis to a member of the military or naval forces at any time prior to entry into active service for a period of not less than one year * * *.'
s 602 (i) . ”

“ Accenting these wartime limitations is the liberalizing legislation by which Congress after cessation of hostilities in World Wars I and II placed its insurance programs on more nearly a commercial basis. Amendments to the War Risk Insurance Act in 1919 expanded the permitted beneficiary class to include more distant relatives of the insured, and, significantly, provided that installments payable but unpaid upon a beneficiary's death might go to his estate. ”