Dial M for Moral Hazard? Incentives to Murder and the Life Assurance Act 1774

One of many possible functions of the insurable interest doctrine is to determine which family members have the right to insure another's life. In deciding this, Eighteenth century English courts made reference to simplistic theories of punishment and deterrence. The subsequent failure to amend or repeal the Life Assurance Act 1774 in the United Kingdom means that those decisions continue to set the formal legal position for the Twenty-first century. This paper challenges the existing class-based model still in force in the United Kingdom and the myth of the universally loving spouse, by reference to empirical evidence. What emerges is a picture of murder for life insurance monies that, whilst rare, spans socio-economic groups and permeates all forms of social relationship. Ultimately, the world imagined by the Life Assurance Act 1774 is
shown to be total fantasy.