‘Destroyed Community Property, Damaged Persons, and Insurers’ Duty to Indemnify Innocent Spouses and Other Co-Insured Fiduciaries: An Attempt to Harmonize Conflicting Federal and State Courts’ Declaratory Judgments’

Wiley E. Rice (professor of law, Saint Mary’s University) has published his article entitled Destroyed Community Property, Damaged Persons, and Insurers’ Duty to Indemnify Innocent Spouses and Other Co-Insured Fiduciaries: An Attempt to Harmonize Conflicting Federal and State Courts’ Declaratory Judgments, 2 Estate Plan. & Community Prop. L.J. 63 (2009).  

Below are excerpts from the article:

Innocent fiduciary disputes generally, and innocent co-insured spouse actions in particular, generate a lot of conflicting rulings and outcomes within and between state and federal judiciaries.  More significant, even after state supreme courts have issued “definitive” innocent co-insured rulings, intra- and interstate court splits continue among state courts.  Similarly, intra- and inter-circuit conflicts exist amount the federal circuits.  Even more relevant, some legislatures in community property states enacted “innocent spouse” statutes.  Put simply, those statutes are designed to protect innocent co-insured spouses’ insurable interests, after insured deviant spouses intentionally destroy community property.  Still, in light of those statutes, conflicting state and federal court rulings and declarations persist. 

. . . 

This article concludes by encouraging state and federal judges to apply more carefully settled, equitable doctrines to interpret insurance contracts and to award or deny innocent co-insureds petitions for declaratory relief.  Current and past courts have considered illusive public policy to interpret valid insurance contacts, and that practice helps to generate judicial conflicts.