SELF DESTRUCTION OF INSURED   463

is insured and in which the sum named is made payabe to himself, his executors, administrators or assigns) expressly provided for the payment of the sum stipulated when or if the assured, in sound mind, took his own life, the contract, even if not prohibited by statute, would be held to be against public policy, in that it tempted or encouraged the assured to commit suicide in order to make pro-vision for those dependent upon him or to whom the was indebted." We are not concerned with an express contract to pay in case of suicide, but with a normal life insurance policy. Payment is to be made upon the event of death, and the risk of death by suicide, as applied to the volume of insurance, is almost infinitesimal. The real question is whether it is against sound public policy for the insurer to assume the risk.

It is urged that parties may not contract for even a possible obligation resting on criminality. Doubtless such is the law. Fauntleroy's Case, [4 Bligh (N. S.) 192 (1530) ], rests upon that principle, and it has recent illustration in the State of Massachusetts. where the Supreme Court denied insurance because the death of an insured woman resulted from a criminal abortion. Hatch v. Mutual Life Insurance Co., 120 Mass. 550. But suicide is not criminal in New Jersey. * * *

Is to the abstract immorality of suicide generally, opinions may differ; but all will admit that in some cases it is ethically defensible. Else how could a man "lay down his life for his friend??" Suicide may be self-sacrifice, as when a woman slays her-self to save her honor. Sometimes self-destruction, humanly speaking, is excusable, as when a man curtails by weeks or months the agony of an incurable disease. It will not do to resort to the argument that in such cases there is no "felonious intent." * * *

If it be public policy to interfere with contracts in order to discourage suicide, then ought the contract of a creditor insuring the life of his debtor, or a wife insuring the life of her husband, to be defeated by the suicide of the insured, for the same motive of self-destruction for the benefit of the assured will be impelling in such cases as in a case where the contract is directly with the insured; yet it has never been suggested that one having an insurable interest in another's life may not, at his own cost, himself contract insurance on that life, or take an assignment of an existing policy, without the risk of forfeiture by the suicide of the insured. Indeed, it has been held otherwise, even in England, where suicide is criminal. Cook v. Black, 1 Hare 390; Moore v. Woolsey, ubi supra. The fact that the insured pays the premiums and purchases insurance for a designated beneficiary, or for the benefit of his estate, can make no difference in his mental attitude. He can gain nothing by his death, and normally his estate will go either to his creditors or to his widow and next of kin. I see no sensible reason to affirm the contract in one case and disallow it in the other. * * *