Court asked to decide on Podnebennaya’s insurance case

Vladimir Podnebennyy’s murder trial is not the only court case happening surrounding the fatal stabbing of Natalya Podnebennaya.

There is a question of money, too.

Documents were filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania surrounding Podnebennaya’s estate. Specifically, there is the question of her life insurance policy and who gets the money.

Prudential Life Insurance filed the complaint, asking the court to essentially take custody of the funds and decide who gets them. But Podnebennaya didn’t name a beneficiary, leaving the question even more complicated.

The primary beneficiary in the case would be the spouse. In this case, that is Podnebennyy, but under Pennsylvania law, you aren’t allowed to benefit financially from killing someone. Podnebennyy is on trial in Bellefonte, a case expected to continue throughout next week, accused of repeatedly stabbing his estranged wife in her car before calling his daughter to tell her what he had done.

That daughter, Olga Igolnikov, lives in Florida. She translated the conversation between herself and her Russian-speaking father for police the day her mother died.

As the deceased’s children, Igolnikov and her sister, Ylena Kim, of Kazakhstan, would be the next class of beneficiaries of the Penn State employee policy, which comes to $5,000 for the basic death benefit, and $210,000 Podenebennaya opted to take in addition.

Igolnikov filed a “preferential beneficiary’s statement” in November, two weeks after her mother’s death, on behalf of herself and her sister.

This story was originally published September 24, 2016 at 12:42 AM with the headline "Court asked to decide on Podnebennaya’s insurance case."