ABSTRACT
Given the war conditions under which some of the claims for life policy benefits were made, a question arises as to whether the life policy benefits of the Armenian victims were payable at all. The coexistence of internal evidentiary documents and external ones would provide compelling evidence that the life insurance policies in this class of claims are indeed valid, and payments are due. New York Life accepted a small number of claims made by the heirs of the deported Armenians. Like New York Life, Union-Vie had also made a handful of payments to the beneficiaries of the survivors, as the enclosure of New York Life's letter to the State Department shows. Both New York Life and Union-Vie stressed that the claims so far filed were only partial, considering the huge number of insured Armenians who in the estimation of the insurers were likely to have met their deaths.
