§ 31-4704 — Life policies — Prohibited provisions.

No policy of life insurance other than industrial insurance, annuities, and pure endowments, with or without return of premiums or of premiums and interest, shall be issued or delivered in the District or be issued by a life company organized under the laws of the District after the 1st day of January 1935 if it contains any of the following provisions:

(1) A provision limiting the time within which any action at law or in equity may be commenced to less than 3 years after the cause of action shall accrue;

(2) A provision by which the policy shall purport to be issued or take effect more than 6 months before the original application for the insurance was made;

(3) Except for provisions relating to misstatement of age, suicide, aviation, and military or naval service in time of war, a provision for any mode of settlement at maturity, after the expiration of the contestable period of the policy, of less value than the amount insured on the face of the policy plus dividend additions, if any, less any indebtedness to the company on or secured by the policy, and less any premium that may, by the terms of the policy, be deducted. This paragraph shall not apply to any nonforfeiture provision;

(4) A provision for forfeiture of the policy for failure to repay any loan on the policy, or to pay interest on such loan, while the total indebtedness on the policy, including interest, is less than the loan value thereof;

(5) A provision to the effect that the agent soliciting the insurance is the agent of the person insured under said policy, or making the acts or representations of such agent binding upon the person so insured under said policy;

(6) A provision permitting the payment of funeral benefits in merchandise or services, or permitting the payment of any benefits other than in lawful money of the United States; or

(7) A provision permitting either contracting to pay, or the payment of, funeral, burial, and other expenses to any designated undertaker or undertaking establishment, or to any particular tradesman or business man, so as to deprive the persons entitled by law to dispose of the body of a deceased, or in any way to control such persons in procuring and purchasing said supplies and services in the open market with the advantage of competition.

Legislative History

June 19, 1934, 48 Stat. 1161, ch. 672, ch. V, § 4; Feb. 19, 1948, 62 Stat. 30, ch. 66, § 3