Before then, in the event of her death, the primary beneficiary had been her husband of more than three decades, Rakesh Kamal, also known as Rick. The backup, or “contingent,” beneficiary was her teenage daughter, Arianna Kamal. But the faxed form changed things: Rick and Arianna Kamal would now share the primary designation, and Rick Kamal’s brother, Manoj Kamal, would be the contingent.
On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, a fax was sent to Genworth, a life insurance company in Virginia. It was a form bearing the signature of Teena Kamal, requesting to change the beneficiaries of her $1.25 million life insurance policy.
Four days after the fax arrived, Rick Kamal, 57, shot and killed Teena and Arianna Kamal in their Dover home, before turning the gun on himself.
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In the months since, Rick and Teena Kamal’s families have been tasked with wading through the wreckage of their finances in probate court. Unbeknownst to even his immediate family, Rick Kamal had amassed massive debt in the years leading up to the murder-suicide, from the mortgage on their $4 million house, to six-figure loans from a family member, to a slew of ill-fated business deals involving associates in the Boston area and beyond.
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Now, the siblings of Rick and Teena Kamal are on opposite sides of a legal proceeding over the payout. Barring a settlement, it could spark a potentially lengthy battle and yield court filings that would shed light on what led a purportedly doting father to murder his wife and daughter in their 21-room mansion. Discovery could include materials such as the police report, Kamal family cellphone records, or the testimony of people in the family’s well-to-do orbit.
”This is salacious and heartbreaking, but this is not uncommon,” said J. Michael Young, a Texas attorney who specializes in life insurance disputes. “Anytime you get a million dollars up in the air, it’s not uncommon to see battles.”
This battle began a few weeks after the Kamals’ deaths, when Rick’s brother, Manoj Kamal, filed a claim to collect the payout from Teena Kamal’s policy, according to court documents filed by Genworth. Meanwhile, Genworth said it “received correspondence” from Teena’s brother, Sandeep Bedi, “raising concerns” as to the circumstances of the deaths and the change of beneficiary form.
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In response to the “potentially conflicting claims,” Genworth in April asked a federal court in Boston to decide who should get the proceeds. The sides have until Aug. 2 to respond to Genworth’s filing, either by reaching a settlement or making their case for the money and taking steps toward a civil trial.
Attorneys for both Manoj Kamal and the Bedi family declined comment, as did a spokesperson for Genworth.
From left: Arianna, Teena, and Rick Kamal. In December 2023, Rick shot and killed Teena and Arianna in their Dover home, before turning the gun on himself. Paula Swift Photography
But several attorneys said the vast majority of these kinds of cases end with a settlement — in other words, the parties agree to divvy up the money.
“I’ve never seen one go to the end, in my experience,” said George Thompson, an insurance claims lawyer in Westborough.
Manoj Kamal’s argument would likely be fairly clean-cut, legal experts said: Just defer to the beneficiary form.
“The argument would be that there’s no evidence that there was any coercion, duress, manipulation,” Thompson said. “It was received by the insurance company before the death. End of discussion, pay the money.”
Manoj Kamal, who lives in Waltham, was the one who called 911 after discovering his brother and his family dead in their home. Prior to their deaths, Manoj Kamal had loaned his brother “a substantial sum of money,” according to an affidavit from Bedi filed in probate court.
Bedi’s counsel, meanwhile, would likely try to poke holes in the beneficiary form’s validity, attorneys said — questioning its close proximity to the slayings, or calling into question whether the signature was really Teena Kamal’s. (The form was also signed by a witness, though it is unclear who. Per Genworth policy, the witness cannot be a beneficiary.)
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“We actually have dealt with . . . cases where it has come down to getting handwriting experts to ferret out some fraud,” said Joseph E. Mattia, a Philadelphia-based life insurance lawyer.
If a judge or jury believed the form to be fraudulent, the policy would revert to the prior beneficiaries, said Mattia. That’s Rick and Arianna Kamal. With both of them dead, the payout would go to Teena Kamal’s estate, and from there follow a state-mandated pecking order: Attorneys fees, funeral expenses, and any outstanding taxes would be paid first. Then creditors. After that, since she died without a will, any leftover money would go to her next of kin — in this case, her parents in India.
So far, no creditors have made a claim against Teena Kamal’s estate, though one has sought money from Rick Kamal’s: a Maryland company called nTech Connect that says he owed them more than $760,000.
In December 2022, nTech loaned $550,000 to Cambetas, a company Rick Kamal operated, according to a lawsuit filed in Maryland court. It was supposed to be repaid in four months, but as the deadline neared, the lawsuit said, Kamal’s communications grew spotty.
Rick Kamal claimed he would be able to repay the loan and mounting interest once he received an influx of cash from an “international wire transfer,” according to an email filed as part of the suit. He later wrote that he was in China, meeting with “the authorities here” regarding his access to the funds.
But payment never came. A lawyer for nTech declined to comment to the Globe, citing the ongoing litigation.
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An email from Rick Kamal dated Sept. 1, 2023, regarding repayment of his loan from the Maryland company nTech Connect. Ryan Huddle
Rick Kamal guaranteed the loan himself; for collateral he listed not his Dover home — which was in the process of being foreclosed on — but rather the Woburn residence of his recently widowed mother, Usha Kamal. He also died owing money to his family, including his wife’s brother, Sandeep Bedi, who filed an affidavit in January testifying that he had loaned approximately $500,000 to his brother-in-law.
In an interview with the Globe in January, Bedi said Rick Kamal had demanded Bedi not tell his sister about the loan, and both Bedi and the Norfolk district attorney’s office say they believe Teena Kamal died not knowing anything of her husband’s massive financial troubles.
“[Teena] thought that they were rolling in money,” Bedi said.
Meanwhile, others to whom Rick Kamal owed money have given up on ever seeing it again.
Andy Pechacek met Rick Kamal in 2012 through a program at MIT. They both worked in the education field — Rick, through the ed-tech company he ran with his wife, EduNova, and Pechacek through work with educational service agencies.
In November 2020, Pechacek loaned Rick Kamal $550,000, after he asked for help launching a project between EduNova, and Embibe, an ed-tech company in India.
“I said, ‘Alright, we don’t really have this money to spare, but I want to help you out,’ ” Pechacek recalled recently.
Rick Kamal never paid the loan back, and the Embibe deal eventually fell through, Pechacek said. In 2021, Rick Kamal told Pechacek he was traveling to China to try to set up a new deal for EduNova. Soon after, he stopped responding to messages. That September, Teena Kamal emailed an associate of Pechacek’s to say that Rick Kamal had fallen ill while abroad, an ailment that purportedly dragged on for months.
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An email from Teena Kamal dated March, 23, 2022, sent to the husband and business partner of Doreen Marvin (erroneously addressed to
Months after Kamal murder-suicide in Dover, a life insurance dispute
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