The household of a girl who died in July 2023 is asking a state court docket to have $150,000 in group life insurance coverage advantages paid to her property, slightly than to a person named as a beneficiary, based mostly on allegations that the person pressured the girl to call him as a coverage beneficiary.

The property of Heather Bari Gottlieb asserts in a criticism filed in a state court docket in Mercer County, New Jersey, that the person, Daniel Dalziel, made Gottlieb hold him on as a half beneficiary for her life insurance coverage advantages and a sole beneficiary for her retirement account property by threatening to kill her, and that Gottlieb meant to take away the person as a beneficiary earlier than she died.

The go well with names Constancy Brokerage Companies as a defendant, together with MetLife and Dalziel, as a result of Gottlieb labored for Constancy Investments and had MetLife group life protection offered by her employer.

What it means: The Gottlieb case might have a bearing on efforts by estates to affect loss of life profit distributions from group life insurance policies ruled by the Worker Retirement Revenue Safety Act, or ERISA.

Heather Bari Gottlieb: Gottlieb was born in 1975 and grew up in New Jersey.

She labored for UBS as a consumer service affiliate from 2011 by way of 2021 after which as a transition specialist at Constancy, based on her LinkedIn web page.

As a transition specialist, she helped shoppers with transactions equivalent to retirement account rollovers.

She lived with Dalziel in Little Silver, New Jersey, and had an “unhealthy and dysfunctional protracted relationship with defendant Dalziel,” based on the Gottlieb property’s criticism.

Dalziel has a conviction for armed theft, and he was convicted of committing easy assault in opposition to Gottlieb in 2020.

The state alleges that Dalziel typically hit Gottlieb, gave her black eyes, coerced her into letting him dwell in her house, stole from her, and coerced her into naming him as a life insurance coverage and retirement account beneficiary.

The opposite life insurance coverage coverage beneficiary was Gottlieb’s mom, Carol Gottlieb.

Gottlieb “lastly was capable of finish her relationship with defendant Dalziel and compelled him to maneuver out of her dwelling, however nonetheless lived in concern of him, to the purpose the place she had safety cameras put in in an effort to detect his presence,” based on the criticism.