Kansas: Beneficiary Disputes and Interpleader Under Kansas Law

What “feloniously” means

K.S.A. 59-513(a) provides: “No person convicted of feloniously killing, or procuring the killing of, another person shall inherit or take by will, by intestate succession, as a surviving joint tenant, as the designated beneficiary of real or personal property, as a beneficiary under a trust or otherwise from such other person any portion of the estate or property in which the decedent had an interest.”¹

Every unlawful killing in Kansas is classified as a felony, so the statute could be read to cover any homicide conviction. The District of Kansas has read it more narrowly. In Primerica Life v. Arnold, the insured’s son, the primary beneficiary, was convicted by a jury of reckless involuntary manslaughter in his father’s death. The insured’s sister, the contingent beneficiary, moved for summary judgment on the conviction alone.²

The court denied the motion:

• It followed a 1959 District of Kansas decision holding that the phrase reaches “only [to] those who have been convicted of intentional killing,” and noted that “No court since Rosenberger has interpreted the word “feloniously” in K.S.A. § 59-513 differently.” The Legislature had amended the statute twice without changing that wording.
• On that reading, the son’s conviction for involuntary manslaughter was “insufficient to satisfy the slayer statute’s prohibition.”
• Kansas’s common-law slayer rule, adopted in Harper v. Prudential, does not need a conviction, but the court predicted it also requires intentional conduct. “Intent is a factual determination, not a question of law,” and the sister had relied on the felony conviction alone. “That is insufficient to establish an entitlement to judgment as a matter of law.”²

The ruling left the question for trial. It did not decide that the son would be paid.

A conviction on appeal

Frantz v. Frantz involved the opposite situation: a beneficiary convicted of intentional first-degree murder of the insured, her husband. Her criminal appeal was still pending, and she asked the courts to wait. The district court awarded the $150,000 policy to the insured’s son, the contingent beneficiary, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed in an unpublished order. The court “ha[d] not located any Kansas authorities indicating that § 59-513 requires a conviction to be final.” Even if finality were required, the common-law rule “bars the beneficiary of a life insurance policy who feloniously kills the insured from recovering under the policy whether convicted or not,” and “The record on appeal indicates that the common-law rule would also bar [her] from recovering the policy proceeds.”³

Freezing the asset while charges are pending

A 2023 amendment added subsection (c). A court “may, upon its own motion or upon the written request of any party, prohibit the sale, distribution, spending or use of an asset or interest described in subsection (a)” by a person “who has been arrested for or charged with the felonious killing” of the decedent. The order may be entered ex parte “upon a showing of criminal charges,” and it ends on dismissal, acquittal, “conviction or other disposition,” or expungement.¹ In an interpleader, the deposit of the proceeds into the court’s registry usually serves the same purpose.

Decisions

Elsewhere on this site

• Hartford Life v. Nebergall (D. Kan.) and the Kansas rule that lets a minor disaffirm contracts are discussed in minor beneficiaries.
• Reliance Standard v. Coleman (D. Kan. 2026), a default judgment between two women who each claimed to be the insured’s wife, is summarized in the decisions library.

Related guides

• State law differences
• Slayer rule
• Divorce and beneficiary designations
• Federal programs
• Attorney’s fees in interpleader

Footnotes

1. K.S.A. 59-513(a), (c). Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. ↩ ↩²

2. Primerica Life Ins. Co. v. Arnold, No. 2:21-cv-02306-TC-TJJ, Doc. 47, at 3–11 (D. Kan. Mar. 24, 2023) (discussing Rosenberger v. Northwestern Mut. Life Ins. Co., 176 F. Supp. 379, 382–83 (D. Kan. 1959), and Harper v. Prudential Ins. Co. of America, 662 P.2d 1264, 1271 (Kan. 1983)). GovInfo. ↩ ↩²

3. Frantz v. Frantz, No. 21-3103, at 2–4 (10th Cir. Mar. 16, 2022) (unpublished order and judgment) (quoting Harper, 662 P.2d at 1271). GovInfo. ↩