자살보험금 청구권에 관한 연구

Abstract

According to Article 659 and 732-2 of Commercial Act, in cases of an insurance contract covering death as a peril insured against, no insurer shall be discharged from liability, even though the peril insured against happens by reason of gross negligence of a policyholder, insured or beneficiary. Therefore, insurer will be discharged from liability in case of intentional accident. However, there is a case when insurance companies are liable for paying insurance of intentional accident as well according to life insurance standard terms This is when the insured committed suicide. However, even if companies pay insurance in case of suicide, what matters is whether they should pay general death benefit or accidental death benefit. In this regard, the Supreme Court judged accidental death benefits should be paid, but another Supreme Court judged it is not necessary to pay insurance if extinctive prescription has run out. In addition, the Financial Supervisory Service(FSS) has caused confusion by supervising insurance companies to pay insurance regardless of Supreme Court judgement. Therefore, this paper explores feature of suicide insurance with commercial law and feasibility of Supreme Court judgement of that companies should pay accidental death benefit if the insured commited suicide and that it is not necessary to pay insurance if extinctive prescription has run out. Also, this paper examined if administrative action of Financial Supervisory Service(FSS) to pay accidental insurance regardless of Supreme Court judgement was appropriate. Furthermore, this paper proposed several alternatives for solving these problems to protect consumers and avoid confusion in real transaction. Firstly, the dispute between the insurer and the policyholder often comes from application of insurance terms or misunderstanding of interpretation. Therefore we clarify phrase of terms to avoid this problem. Secondly, in case of dormant claims, the insurer abandons the profit of extinctive prescription and pays benefits without any time limit. This is because there are many cases when the insured do not receive dormant claims not knowing the presence of it. It is necessary to extend extinctive prescription of insurance claims in case of insurance when accident happens for general insurance consumers who are not familiar with extinctive prescription principle. Thirdly, the purpose of clause that insurance is paid when the insured commits suicide is for protecting the beneficiary. However, this clause sometimes results in provoking suicide. Therefore, suicide exemption period is extended from 2 years to 3 years or 5 years to prevent the possibility of artificial accident. This paper expects this content will be reflected in the amendment of law or terms and help development of healthy insurance business and consumer protection.