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Publish Date: 1/23/2005
Mirabal daughter to receive $250K payment
BOULDER — Until
recently, the only things 5-year-old Mikaela Mirabal had to remember
her mother by were two receiving blankets Natalie
Mirabal kept her in when Mikaela was an infant. In
December, Mikaela and her grandmother won a two-year battle
against the company that sold Natalie
Mirabal a $250,000 life insurance policy shortly before the Longmont
woman was murdered by Mikaela’s father.
“I’m very pleased,” Enselma Vasquez, Mikaela’s
grandmother, said Friday from her New Mexico home. “One day,
I’ll be able to tell her, ‘You not only have these blankets,
you have this money that your mom left you.’”
In 1999, Matthew Mirabal strangled and
decapitated Natalie Mirabal before dumping her body in Lefthand
Canyon. Matthew Mirabal was convicted of murder in 2000 and sentenced
to life in prison.
During his trial, prosecutors argued that Matthew Mirabal had urged his wife
to apply for life insurance, intending to murder her and collect the payment.
After
Mirabal’s conviction, Protective
Life Insurance Co. claimed that his wife’s policy was void
because he had murdered her.
But Boulder attorney Lance Goff, who represented
Mikaela in the insurance case, took the case to court and argued
that Natalie Mirabal was self-motivated when she obtained the
policy.
“She had just had a child,” Goff said. “She
applied for it and signed the papers.”
Goff
called the case “extraordinary,” in
part because the insurance company fought the claim for nearly
two years after it was filed in February 2003.
Goff would not comment on specific terms
of the deal because of a confidentiality agreement. However,
a settlement filed Dec. 9 in Boulder County District Court explains
how the payment will be divided.
Mikaela
Mirabal will receive $154,380 in an investment account that
will be available to her when
she turns 21. An additional $3,000 will be given to Enselma Vasquez “for
Mikaela’s benefit,” while the remainder will cover attorney
fees, according to court documents.
Vasquez,
who is now Mikaela’s guardian,
said the settlement with Protective Life is a relief because
it ensures that Mikaela will be taken care of, even though
her father is serving a life sentence for murdering her mother.
“She’ll be comfortable. She probably won’t
be a millionaire,” Vasquez said. “At least if I’m going to see
the Lord some day, she’ll have something to fall back on.”
She said she hopes Mikaela uses the money
to attend college.
Vasquez
described her granddaughter as a “very smart, very loveable” kindergartner
who still misses her mother at times.
“This can’t replace her mom,” she said. “There
are times when she wants her mom. There are bittersweet moments,
like when she went to school for the first time.”
An attorney for Protective Life Insurance
said he could not comment on the case. |
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