How have courts overruled a beneficiary designation in a personal injury case?

Most of the authorities in which courts have been willing to override a beneficiary designation can be explained on the basis of an agreement between one of the claimants and the insured that removed the insured’s ability to designate a later beneficiary.[6] As noted earlier, Shannon involved a separation agreement in which the insured undertook to name his first spouse as a beneficiary irrevocably. In Bielny, the separation agreement required the insured to name the children of the first marriage as irrevocable beneficiaries. In Fraser v. Fraser, the trial judge found on the facts that the terms of the separation agreement requiring the insured to maintain the plaintiff as beneficiary were tantamount to an irrevocable designation.