Research On Suicide Exception Clause

Exception clause is a very important part of insurance contract, it rules the risksand damages out of the insurance coverage. In fact, lots of disputes between insurerand insured and beneficiary mostly caused of the controversies on whether a situationis included in the insurance coverage or not, or the situation is a part of exceptionclause which is specified in the insurance contract.Suicide exception clause is an important one in life insurance contracts. Eversince insurance system originated in European, committing suicide by insured himselfhas been a challenge to both academia and practice. Attitude to insured’s committingsuicide changes from time to time. At the beginning in the18thcentury, insured’scommitting suicide was viewed as a crime, then it was believed that it was technicallydifficult to cover suicide during the process of actuary in the19thcentury, all deathcaused by suicidal activity were not included in insurance coverage until thebeginning of the20thcentury when the insurance companies were found to havetelling a lie to the public on the insurability, some scholars persists that the purpose toestablish insurance system is to compensate the insured’s family members, so it is notreasonable or fair to rule the insured’s committing suicide out of insurance coverage.From then on, the insurability of insured’s committing suicide was confirmed. Fromthe second half of the20thcentury, insured’s committing suicide finally confirmedinsurable by the insurance companies when the insurance contract reaches theexoneration time limit. Thus it can be seen the attitude to the insured’s committingsuicide reflects the improvement on human rights. With respect to China, on28thFeb.,2009, Insurance Law of People’s Republic ofChina adopted by the NPC after amendments, and come into effect since1st, Nov.,2009. Compared with the old insurance law which passed in2002, the new insurancelaw had made much progress on legislative style, incontestable principle,compensation payouts, policy transfer, standard clauses of insurance contract, and soon. The new insurance law has a great change on insured’s committing clause, article66of old insurance law says, if the insured to the contract that takes the death of theinsured as the condition of payment commits suicide, the insurer shall not undertaketo pay the insurance, except the cases provided for in the second paragraph of thisarticle, but the insurer shall return the insurance premiums paid by the insuredaccording to the cash value of the policy; if the insured commits suicide two yearsafter the contract that take death as the condition of payment is signed, the insurershall pay the insurance according to contract. Article44of new insurance law whichestablished in2009says, if a contract stipulates the death of the insured as a conditionfor payment of insurance benefits and the insured commits suicide within two yearsfrom the date of formation of the contract of the restoration of its validity, the insurershall not be liable to pay the insurance benefits, unless the insured, at the time of his/her suicide, was without civil capacity. This change was believed to have made agreat progress on balancing the rights and liabilities of insurer, insured andbeneficiary.But there remain some problems. Firstly, the distribution and the standard ofburden of proof are not clear, secondly, I myself think it is unconscionable to removethe committing suicide of person limited in civil capacity out of insurance coverage.For the above problems, this paper tries to find the legal basis from thelegislation of civil law system and the precedent of case law system, hoping to draw alesson from this, combine the actual condition of our country, and make somelegislative proposal.