Months after Kamal’s murder-suicide in Dover, a life insurance dispute

Four days after the fax arrived, Rick Kamal, 57, shot and killed Teena and Arianna Kamal in their Dover home, then turned the gun on himself.

In the months since then, Rick and Teena Kamal families have been given the task of digging through the rubble of their finances at the probate court. Even without his immediate family knowing, Rick Kamal had amassed huge sums of money debt in the years prior to the murder-suicide, from the mortgage on their $4 million home, to six-figure loans from a relative and a series of failed business deals with associates in the Boston area and beyond.

Now, the couple’s siblings are facing off in what could become a lengthy lawsuit over her sizable life insurance payout. It’s a legal showdown with the potential to shed light on what drove a supposedly loving father to murder his wife and daughter in their 21-room mansion.

“This is salacious and heartbreaking, but this is not unusual,” said J. Michael Young, a Texas attorney who specializes in life insurance litigation. “Anytime you get a million dollars in the air, it’s not unusual to see fights.”

This battle began a few weeks after the Kamals’ death, 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 had received “correspondence” from Sandeep Bedi, Teena’s brother, who is administering her estate, “raising concerns” about the circumstances of the deaths and the change in the beneficiary form.

In response to these “potentially conflicting claims,” ​​Genworth in April asked a federal court in Boston to decide who should get the proceeds from the policy. Manoj Kamal and Sandeep Bedi have until Aug. 2 to respond to Genworth’s filing, either by settling or moving forward with a civil lawsuit.

An attorney for Manoj Kamal declined to comment, as did attorneys for the Bedi family. In an email to the Globe, a Genworth spokesperson said the company “does not comment on pending litigation.”

The path to trial could take months or even years, several attorneys not involved in the case said, and would “give anyone the opportunity to send a subpoena and get access to evidence that you might not otherwise be able to get,” said George Thompson, an insurance claims attorney in Westborough. That could include materials such as the police report, the Kamal family’s cellphone records or the testimony of people in the family’s wealthy circles.

But several attorneys say the vast majority of such cases end in a settlement — in other words, the parties agree to split the money.

“I’ve never seen one go all the way, in my experience,” Thompson said.

If the lawsuit were to proceed, Manoj Kamal’s argument would likely be pretty straightforward, legal experts said: Just assume the beneficiary model.

“The argument would be that there is no evidence of coercion, pressure or manipulation,” Thompson said. “It was received by the insurance company prior to the death. End of discussion, pay the money.”

Manoj Kamal, who lives in Waltham, was the one who called 911 after discovering the bodies of his brother’s family. Before their deaths, Manoj Kamal had loaned his brother “a significant amount of money,” according to a sworn statement filed in probate court by Bedi.

Bedi’s attorney, meanwhile, would likely try to poke holes in the form’s validity, lawyers said — by questioning its proximity to the killings, or by questioning whether the signature was actually Teena Kamal’s. (The form was also signed by a witness, though it’s unclear who. Under Genworth policy, the witness cannot be a beneficiary.)

“We have actually had cases where we had to actually bring in handwriting experts to detect fraud,” said Joseph E. Mattia, a Philadelphia life insurance attorney.

If a judge or jury finds the form to be fraudulent, the policy will be returned to the previous beneficiaries, Mattia said. That’s Rick and Arianna Kamal. If they’re both dead, the payout goes to Teena Kamal’s estate, and from there, there’s a state-mandated pecking order: First, attorney fees, funeral expenses, and any outstanding taxes. Then creditors. Then, since she died without a will, the remaining money goes to her next of kin — in this case, her parents in India.

Creditors have a year from Teena Kamal’s death to file a claim against her estate. None have done so, though one has surfaced in Rick Kamal’s estate: a Maryland company called nTech Connect, which is seeking more than $760,000.

In December 2022, nTech loaned $550,000 to a company Rick Kamal ran called Cambetas, according to a lawsuit filed in Maryland federal court. Rick Kamal was supposed to repay it within four months, but as the deadline approached, his communications with nTech became erratic, the lawsuit says.

Rick Kamal claimed he would be able to repay the loan and the rising interest once he received an influx of money via an “international wire transfer,” according to an email filed as part of the lawsuit. He later wrote that he was in China and meeting with “authorities here” about his access to the funds.

But the payment never came.

Rick Kamal guaranteed the loan himself. He didn’t list his Dover home as collateral — which had been foreclosed on by the developer and lender the same month he took out the nTech loan — but instead the Woburn home of his recently widowed mother, Usha Kamal.

An attorney for nTech declined to comment to the Globe, citing the ongoing litigation.

Teena Kamal’s estate will not be responsible for her husband’s individual debts, legal experts said. Teena Kamal’s brother, Bedi, said his sister knew nothing about her husband’s financial problems, a belief shared by the Norfolk district attorney’s office. Bedi also had loaned Rick Kamal money — about $500,000, according to his sworn statement. In an interview with the Globe in January, Bedi said Rick Kamal had demanded that he not tell his sister about the loan.

Meanwhile, others to whom Rick Kamal owed money have given up hope of ever seeing the film, such as Andy Pechacek and Doreen Marvin.

Pechacek met Rick Kamal in 2012 at MIT. Both men were involved in the education field—Rick Kamal through EduNova, the ed-tech company he and Teena Kamal ran—and Pechacek soon introduced him to Marvin, another education professional.

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. Rick and Teena Kamal, Pechacek and Marvin collaborated on the effort.

“I said, ‘Okay, we don’t really have this money available, but I want to help you,’” Pechacek recalled recently.

Rick Kamal never repaid the loan, and the Embibe deal ultimately 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. He stopped responding to messages shortly thereafter. That September, Teena Kamal told Marvin’s husband and business partner in an email that Rick Kamal had fallen ill overseas, an ailment that reportedly lasted for months.

In May 2022, Teena emailed Kamal that her husband had been transferred to Mass. General. She wrote that if Rick Kamal had not improved by September, the couple would be “dissolving and liquidating our assets” to pay off their debts; when September arrived, she wrote that “we are winding things down and should have the payment available sometime in January.”

The last time they heard from Teena Kamal was in November 2022, when she said her husband was still “in a relatively isolated state (which was challenging for his mind).”

After that it was quiet.

“The next thing we heard, he had shot her,” Pechacek said.

Dana Gerber can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @danagerber6.