Suppose a person has life insurance and goes missing while the policy is valid. His body is not found, noone saw anything which would be an evidence of the person death. Suppose going missing is not an exception to the policy, so some time passes to be sure that the person is indeed missing and the insurance company pays.
Ten years later the person is back. What happens? Is an investigation started by the insurance company? Does it request the money back?
There are actual cases where this has occurred. In cases where the beneficiary was suspected of knowing that the insured person was alive, they have faced fraud charges. In cases where they appeared to act in good faith, the legal consequences are less severe, but the likelihood of the insurance company to sue for their money back will depend on the circumstances and the amount of the payout.
One interesting case was a woman who abandoned her family and didn’t reappear until 11 years later. The family didn’t know where she was, so they probably won’t end up paying back the relatively small $100,000 that they received.
In the United States if the person insures an article and then claims a loss of that article, the insurance replaces the missing/destroyed article. If later on the item is found the original is owned by the insurance company. The person who purchased the policy doesn’t get to keep both.
Of course if the item was so valuable to be priceless the insurance company would be open to an exchange of items or money.
But if they suspect fraud…then it becomes a legal matter.
Even when a life isn’t involved it can be a source of dispute: http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/news/spencer/spencers-art-law-journal5-7-10.asp
When life insurance is involved, the item being replace is the lost stream of income. The question of returning money and how much would be a legal issue. They would also want to know if there was fraud, and who was involved.