Life insurance policies are written to exclude suicide and intentional self harm, not every risky decision a person might make. Yet insurers increasingly argue that deaths involving DUI are not accidental at all. Instead, they claim the insured effectively caused their own death by knowingly engaging in dangerous conduct.
This strategy hinges on collapsing two very different legal concepts into one: foreseeability and intent. When insurers blur that line, valid life insurance claims are often denied.
How Foreseeability Becomes a Substitute for Intent
Insurance companies often acknowledge that a policyholder did not intend to die. They then pivot to a different argument. Because driving under the influence is dangerous, death was a foreseeable outcome. According to this logic, foreseeability equals intent.
Courts have long treated those concepts differently. Negligence and recklessness describe poor decisions. Intent requires a conscious objective to bring about a specific result. Life insurance exclusions for self inflicted injury typically require intent, not bad judgment.
When insurers rely on foreseeability alone, they are often trying to expand exclusions beyond what the policy actually says.
A Houston Case Illustrates the Strategy
In one high profile dispute, a Houston widow challenged a denial issued by Cigna involving more than $200,000 in life insurance benefits. Her husband died in a car crash while intoxicated. Law enforcement classified the death as accidental, and there was no evidence of suicidal behavior.
Cigna denied the claim anyway. Its position was that choosing to drive while intoxicated made death so likely that the accident could not be considered accidental. The insurer characterized the death as self inflicted, even though the policy did not contain a specific DUI exclusion.
Why This Argument Often Fails Under Scrutiny
Most life insurance policies distinguish between intentional harm and unintended consequences. Suicide exclusions are narrowly drafted and usually apply only when the insured intended to cause death.
Courts frequently reject attempts to stretch those exclusions to cover reckless conduct. Driving drunk may be dangerous, illegal, and irresponsible, but it is not the same as intending to die. Without proof of intent, insurers often cannot satisfy the requirements of a self inflicted injury exclusion.
In this case, the widow submitted medical examiner evidence confirming there was no indication of self harm. That evidence undercut the insurer’s attempt to redefine the policy after the fact.
Why Policies Without DUI Exclusions Matter
Some policies expressly exclude deaths arising from intoxicated driving. Many do not. When a policy is silent, insurers sometimes try to fill the gap with broad interpretations of unrelated exclusions.
Courts generally resist this approach. Insurance contracts are interpreted as written. If an insurer wanted to exclude DUI related deaths, it could have done so explicitly.
Adding exclusions during claim review is not contract interpretation. It is claim rewriting.
The Broader Risk for Beneficiaries
DUI based denials are not limited to car accidents. Similar arguments appear in cases involving falls, drownings, and other accidents where alcohol was present.
If insurers are allowed to equate risky behavior with intent, coverage would shrink dramatically. Many ordinary accidents would become excluded events, even though policyholders never agreed to such limitations.
What Beneficiaries Should Focus On
When a claim is denied based on DUI or intoxication, key questions often determine whether the denial can be challenged successfully:
Does the policy explicitly exclude DUI related deaths
Does the exclusion require intent or merely risk
What does the death certificate and medical examiner report say
Is the insurer relying on speculation rather than evidence
In many cases, insurers cannot bridge the gap between intoxication and intent.
Why These Denials Are Often Reversed
Once insurers are required to defend their reasoning in court, the weakness of foreseeability based arguments often becomes apparent. Judges focus on what the policy requires, not what the insurer wishes it said.
Where intent cannot be proven, and where no DUI exclusion exists, many of these denials do not survive legal challenge.
Final Thoughts
Driving under the influence is dangerous, but danger alone does not transform an accident into an intentional act. Life insurance policies exclude suicide and self harm, not every foreseeable risk a person might take.
When insurers deny claims by redefining recklessness as intent, they often overstep the policy’s limits. DUI based denials deserve careful scrutiny. In many cases, they are not the final word but the opening move in a dispute the insurer is not prepared to defend.