Partnership or Joint lift—This class of policy is one which especially appeals to business men. It not infrequently happens in commercial firms that the death of a partner entails the withdrawal of his share of capital, and this with drawal may leave the business in a weakened condition, or at least prove an inconvenient diminution of its resources. To meet these contingencies it is possible to effect assurances upon two or more lives, so that the sum assured is payable on the happening of the first death. If such an assurance, of sufficient amount, is effected upon the lives of partners, the withdrawal of a deceased member's share from the business would be compensated by the addition to Capital Account of the sum assured upon his life. Assurances of this class are also very frequently effected upon husband and wife, and are also used in connection with family arrangements. There is no limit to the number of lives which may this be assured jointly, and doubtless any company would give a quotation for a combination of even a dozen or two persons. The follSwing is from the tables of the Commercial Union Last Survivor and Survivorships.—The first of these classes of assurance is de signed to meet the practice, common in many districts of England and in Ireland, of granting LeaSeS depending on two or more lives. The object of such an assurance is to enable the lessees, at a small annual cost, to provide against the loss caused by the death of their nominees. Separate proposals and Reports are usually required for each life. Assurances under the second of these classes are generally effected in connection with loans on reversions where the fund only comes into possession in the event of A. surviving B. In such a case the life A. only requires to undergo the usual medical examination. The following tables arc extracted from those published by the Guardian :— Investment and leasehold insurances.—This fbriti of assurance has been primarily devised in order to enable investors in leasehold and other deteriorating seem ities to provide for the repayment of their capital when the term of the investment expires. And many other objects can be covered by policies of this desciiption with equal facility, particularly such objects as the repayment of mortgages, the repair or displacement of manufacturing plant, and the writing down of termin able stocks purchased at a premium. The Norwich Union, from whose tables the illustrative rates set out below arc taken, enumerate thc olvets as f011ow s (1) The repayment of loans on leaseholds or on any other class of security ; C2) The redemption of leasehold values which would otherwise be lost to the lease holder ; (3) 'Ile redemption, on maturity, of capital invested in terminable securities; (4) Generally—the payment of' any sum of money at any date. The creation of sinking funds to replace capital, cover depreciation or repay athances, has always been a matter of great difficulty for private individuals, and the general fall in the rate of interest on first-class securities has so inerew;ed the difficulty, that the maintenance of such funds is now particularly difficult for most people. It involves the yearly or half-yeally investment, not only of compara tively small sums, but also of the interest on these, however small, immediately on its being earned. The assurance companies, such as the one jiit mentioned, undertake to relieve the bolder of a policy of.this class of all the trouble and risk of creating such a fund ; and tlicy claim, moreover, that these policies, in most cases, will secure the particular object intended in a shorter time than could be accomplished by a private investor. A borrower cannot expect his
creditor to accept repayment of an advance in small yearly or half-yearly sums, nor can he himself safely, conveniently, or profitably accumulate these at com pound interest. But he can pay these small sums to an assurance company, and secure a capital redemption policy for the amount of the advance payable ix) full on maturity.
Why pay rent ? This question is now being persistently asked in the public prints by a number of up-to-date assurance Cump.mies—the .S'rotti.sh Temperance for example. The desire of the---e companies is to transform a tenant into a landlord. Assume the tenant to be living in a house at a lent of .£1-5, the price of the house is £600, and wishes to buy it, but has only £200 of his own. The company mill provide time £400 balance on such terms that it will be re paid in 20 years, for example, by annual payments of .£34, and that if the tenant-nom-turned-landlord dies during that term the house will fall into his estate absolutely free.
(.01t-wt.—Me contract of life insurance is not a contract of indemnity. It is a contract which assures the payment of a certain sum of money upon the death of sonic specified person in consideration of the due payment of certain monies called premiums. The contract is ordinarily expressed in an instrument called a policy of assurance, and the person life is the subject of the policy is called the assured. As life assurances are generally eirected with companies and societies, it will be convenient to designate the parties liable on It policy for payment of the sum assured as " the company." The contract is based upon a proposal to the company by the assured, and an acceptance thereof. It is then formally embodied in the policy, which must be duly stumped. The conclusion of the contract by way of proposal and acceptance is best evidenced by the payment and receipt of the first premium. 'rhe contract may be complete even though no policy has been issued.
The policy.—This is often in a form similar t' the one set out below. If upon a prcTosal and a contract for a life assurance a policy is drama tip by the company in a form which difTers from the terms of the contract, and varies the rights of the assured, the court, upon due application being made, will interfere, and deal with the case on the footing of the actual con tract and not on that of the policy. And where there is an ambiguity in the terms of a policy the court will construe it on the principle of taking its words most strongly against the party who offers it. Even though a foreign law is expressly imported into a policy by, for example, the use of such words as "in conformity with the [foreign] statute," yet that foreign law will not, for every purpose, be considered by the English courts as incorporated in the policy. The reference to the foreign law, according to ex parte Dever, may only affect the interpretation of the policy. In Scotland it has been expressly held that there may be a valid assurance without any delivery at all of a policy, if the terms are agreed and the premiums have been paid (Christie v. North British); and in England too, though a policy is lost or destroyed, an action may be brought thereon to recover the assurance money, and the company must find its indemnity against other claims in the order of the court directing payment in the action (Crokatt v. Ford; England v. Tredegar).
Stamps.