Stevens v. Woodmen of the World

The appellant society is not a corporation selling insurance for profit. It is a mutual society whose members agreed to contribute to each other through a corporation formed with peculiar statutory limitations as to its powers and the protection which it furnished its members. The statute under which it was organized — Colorado — and the laws of the state where the certificate was delivered — Montana — become important. These states, for reasons of their own and a public policy thus expressed in the statute, limited the persons who could be made beneficiaries. The statutes of the two states…