Kolkata: There isn’t any legal bar for anybody in making their same-sex accomplice a nominee in insurance policies in the title of that particular person, the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has confirmed in a reply to an RTI utility by a Kolkata-based queer couple, Suchandra Das and Sree Mukherjee.
Speaking to IANS, Suchandra knowledgeable that the LIC has clearly talked about in its reply that there is no such thing as a illegality in nominating any particular person, together with a stranger or a legal entity.
“In effect, this means that there is no bar for a policyholder from making a person not related to him or her by birth, consanguinity, marriage or adoption as his or her nominee,” stated Suchandra, who’s a skilled photographer.
Her accomplice Sree Mukherjee is a digital advertising and marketing skilled.
Suchandra additionally knowledgeable that they’d made a comparable RTI utility to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) asking whether or not any particular person not associated to her or him by beginning, consanguinity, marriage or adoption as his or her nominee in the checking account.
“RBI has replied on this count but its answer lacks clarity like that of LIC. However, quoting Section 45ZA to 45ZF of the Banking Regulations Act, 1949, which deals with the issue of nomination, the RBI maintained that there is no mention of any condition nor there are any restrictions regarding who can be a nominee. So, from this reply it is clear that no bank can insist that I can make only someone related to me a nominee,” she added.
However, there may be a catch in your complete matter, defined a senior counsel of Calcutta High Court.
“Becoming a nominee in an insurance policy or bank account does not necessarily make that nominee a successor of the insurance proceeds or the funds in the bank account concerned,” Gupta instructed IANS.
“A nominee is an authorised person of the policyholder to whom the insurance company will hand over the insurance funds in the absence of the policyholder. However, the nominee can only be the recipient of the money and is duty-bound under the law to hand over the entire money to the successor of the deceased. A nominee, therefore, is merely an agent of the policyholder,” he stated.
However, the senior counsel, who recurrently gives free legal recommendation via the Varta on-line platform for legal, medical and different help to the LGBTQ neighborhood folks, assured that there’s a legal technique to make the nominee additionally a successor of the funds.
“In, that case, the policyholder or bank account holder will have to bequeath those funds by executing a registered will and thus making the nominee also the successor,” Gupta instructed IANS.
