statute of limitation State of Oregon

[wimrn]

my father passed away january 2000. he had a 50,000 life insurance policy that he court ordered to keep in mine & mysisters name through the support period. we only found out he died via the internet last spring, since then we have been trying to get life insurance co to pay. they already paid the claim to someone else, who they paid it to they have not told us that information either. they are stalling now. they have had a qdro on file since 1995. my father did not change the beneficiary, our step mom had already forged one change of beneficary to her name in 1995, they had to send that one back as the signatures did not match. they have had my claim since July and i have received 2 letters from them. one saying i mailed claim to wrong office so it took a month to get to new office and the other one 7 weeks ago asking for additional information, so they could finalize claim. i sent additional info in 5 weeks ago, still no answer. i understand that this is a complicated claim but 5 months is a little too long. am wondering if they are just stalling until jan 15th if there is a statue of limations on filing a lawsuit against the insurance co.

 

[ALawyer]

I am not an OR lawyer (assuming OR law applies) and do not know what the statute of limitations is to file a claim against the company, and I am not about to go looking.

I do know that most companies would not stall to escape via the statute of limitations, although I would not put it past some.

To protect yourself, however, you could tell them that in view of the time constraints you will be contacting counsel and instructing counsel to file suit immediately UNLESS they issue you a letter, signed by an executive officer, waiving any possible defense of the staute of limitations thru January 15, 2003. But it may be a good idea to hire counsl anyway as you may have to sue the company AND the person who received the money, should the insurance company claim it has no liability to you.