Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Potter

The question presented on these appeals is whether the doctrine of federal preemption applies, specifically, whether federal law allowed a former husband to change the beneficiary on a Federal Employees' Group Life Insurance (FEGLI) policy, even though a state circuit court, in a divorce proceeding, had ordered him to maintain his former wife as the sole beneficiary.

The learned trial judge, in a lengthy judgment, determined that "the effect of a provision in a decree of divorce requiring a party to maintain a designated person as a beneficiary of life insurance create[d] a vested equitable…