MISSING WILLS OF MILLIONAIRES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 37, 13 February 1937, Page 9 (Supplement)

MISSING WILLS OF MILLIONAIRES.

Several Remarkable Instances.

THE announcement following the death recently' of Lady Houston that her will could not be found, involving the disposal of an eetate valued at nearly £5,000,000, recalls the interesting fact that under English law a will that has been lost, may, in certain circumstances, be proved, provided its provisions are known. This enables the wishes of the testator to be carried out, and also prevents these wishes being thwarted in favour of any party whose interests might be served by the loss or destruction of the will. The law in.this respect was decided in the case of the will of the first Lord St. Leonards, who had been Solicitor-General, and also Lord Chancellor of England. On his death in 1875 his will could not be found when ■the members of his family assembled after the funeral to hear the document read by his solicitor, Mr. W. M. Trollope, of the firm of Trollope and Winckworth. Naturally there was some consternation when the will was missing from the place in which it had been kept by Lord St Leonards, but Mr. Trollope had the presence of mind to tell deceaseds daughter, Miss Charlotte Sugdcn, to retire at once and write down what she could remember of the provisions of the will. The case came before the court, but the will (which was never found) was proved on the evidence of what testator's daughter and other witnesses declared to be its contents. Case of Lora St. Leonards.

Of tho first Lord St. Leonards, who was tho son of a London hairdresser, the "Dictionary of National Biography states that after he retired from politics "He took an active part in the judicial deliberations of the House of Lords and tho Privy Council. Within his limits he as nearly as possible realised the ideal of an infallible orac-le of the law. His judgments, always deivcred with remarkalilo readiness, were very rarely revised, and the opinions expressed in his text books were hardly less authoritative. As a law reformer he did excellent work, in the cautious and tentative spirit dictated by his nature and training. He would deserve to be held in grateful remembrance were it only for the abolition of tho absurd rule which before 1552 annually defeated a host of wills, for no better reason than that the testator had not placed his signature precisely at the foot of the document. . . . The mysterious disappearance of his will, which ho had made some years before his death, occasioned a lawsuit which established tho admissability of secondary evidence of tho contents of such a document, in the absence of presumption that tho testator had destroyed it."

Hidden Wills. Doubtless the disappearance of a will that has boon properly executed is due in some cases to the criminal act of an interested person in destroying it; but most cases of missing wills are due to the fact Hint testators have hidden them. What is the psychological reason that impels a man, after making his will, and carefully disposing of his property among those lie wishes to benefit, to hide the document so that it cannot be found when his death takes place? Apparently the impulse comes from the desire to put out of sigiit a document that arouses thoughts of death. Many cases have como hefore the courts of various countries in which wills produced for probate have beeii found in unexpected places. In some of these cases several years havo elapsed between the death of the testator and tho discovery of the will]. In a case that came before a Scottisli court the will was found in an old scrap book 10 years after the testator's death. In another case hoard by an English court tho missing will had been discovered inside the lining of an old silk hat which had belonged to the testator. In another the will was found in an oldfashioned clock, and was accidentally discovered when the clock stopped and its works were examined. A will written on half a sheet of notepaper was found hidden in a blotting pad. A favourite place for hiding wills has been inside the back of framed pictures.

£10,000 Reward. From time to time rewards are offered for tho discovery of missing wills, which tho interested parties believe may have been entrusted by the testators to bankers or solicitors. In Mny, 1912, a sensation was created in England by' tho offer of the large reward of £10,000 for tho production of a missing codicil to the will of the late Sir John Murray Scott, who left an estate valued at over £1,000,000. In early manhood Scott had been secretary to Sir Richard Wallace, who spent a fortune collecting beautiful works of art, which his widow bequeathed to the nation. These works of art, known as the Wallace Collection, are on view at Hertford House,_ London, and constitute one of the chief places of interest to visitors to London, and to lovers of art. Scott. who acquired considerable wealth on his own account, was bequeathed an estate valued at £700,000 on the death of the widow of Sir Richard Wallace. Hβ left a will bequeathing the bulk of his fortune to Lady Sackvillc, whom he had known as a little girl during the siege of Paris in IS7O-71. He had afterwards maintained a fatherly interest in her. But among his papers after his death was found the draft of a codicil in his own handwriting, revoking the large bequests to Lady Sackville, and substituting a sum of £20,000 and a life interest in another sum of £30,000. But no duly executed copy of tho codicil was ever found, despite tho reward of £10,000 olTercd for it by tho relatives of the testator, and therefore the bulk of his large fortune went to Lady Sackvillc A few months later a reward of 10,000 guineas was offered in England for the discovery of the will of Henry Thomas Coghlan, who had lived like a hermit in a fashionable part of London, and leffan estate valued at £G75,000. No will was ever found, and the estate was divided among distant relatives, whom the law decided were the next of kin. The Chancery Court found that deceased, who was a widower, died intestate "without child or parent, or brother or sister, or uncle or aunt, or nephew or neiee."

A Millionaire's Will. A will of the first Viscount Leverhulme, a millionaire, who died in 1025, contained a remarkable provision with regard to the creation of a trust fund of £1,200,000. He Iwgiin life as a grocer's boy, and founded the firm of Lever Bros., and built up a vast bu°.i-

HOW A LOST WILL CAN BE PROVED.

ness, with ramifications in various countries. His will provided that the capital of the trust fund of £1,200,000 should not be distributed among the beneficiaries until 21 years after the deaths of the children of the executors of the will and of the descendants of Queen Victoria, who were living at the time of the testator's death. The youngest descendant of Queen Victoria, who was born before Lord Leverhulme's death, is the Hon. Gerald David Lascelles, the second son of Princess Mary. He is a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, and, assuming that ho lives for the Biblical span of three score years and ten, tho trust fund which Lord Leverhulmo's will created will continue in operation into the second decade of tho next century. Thie period includes tho 21 years that are to elapse after the death of tho Hon. Gerald David Lascelles before the capital of tho fund is distributed among the beneficiaries. Tho object of creating a fund in such terms was to ensure its continuance for tho longest period that English law allows. A testator caiuiot create a fund in perpetuity; he cannot tie up any of his money or property beyond a life or lives in being at the time of his own death, and 21 years afterwards. Members of tho Royal family are generally selected bj lawyers in drawing up wills of this kind, because their deaths are public events, and tho dates are easily ascertained for the purpose of carrying out tho 'terms of the will. Law Against Perpetuities.

The law against perpetuities was passed by the British Parliament in ISOO, as a result of the will of Peter Tlieilusson, a London merchant of Swiss descent, who died on July 21, 1797. He left £100,000 in bequests to his wife and children, and directed that the residue of his estate, amounting to about £000,000, should be placed in trust, and allowed to accumulate during the lives of his three sons, and their sons. When all his sons and grandsons were dead, the entire estate was to go to his eldest great-grandson. Should no heir exist, tho accumulated estate was to be transferred to a sinking fund for the reduction of the national debt of Great Britain. Tho provisions of this will caused much controversy, and it was contended that it was against public interest to tie up an estate for such a long period, and then hand over the vast accumulation to a single individual. Various calculations were made as to the ultimate total value of the estate, when all testator's sons and grandsons were dead. . According to a conservative estimate, it was calculated that at the end of 70 years the value of the estate would amount to about £19,000,000.

The Tliollusson family endeavoured to upset the will, but Lord Chancellor Loiighboroiigh, before whom the action was heard in Chancery, pronounced the will valid, and on appeal to the House of Lords this decision was unanimously affirmed. As already stated, Parliament then took action to limit the duralinn of the accumulation of trust funds. But events thwarted the intention of Peter Thellnssou to bestow a fortune of many millions of pounds on a descendant, who, when testator died, had not been born. His last grandson died in 1851!, and therefore the time had come for the accumulated trust fund to be handed over to the heir. There were rival claimants, and the case was taken into court.

The Leverhulme Will. One of the claimants was the eldest grandson of testator's eldest son, and tho other was testator's eldest greatgrandchild, who was the grandson of a younger son. The House of Lords decided on appeal in ISSS, that Charles S. Thellussou, the grandson of testator's eldest son, was the heir to tho fortune. But instead of a fortune of a score of millions, the estate amounted to little more than the £000,000 at which it was valued when Peter Thelhisson died 01 years earlier. Owing to "accidents of management" money had been lost by the trustees from time to time, and the losses, together with legal expenses, had about equalled the gains in 61 years.

Lord Leverhulmo's will provided for the annual distribution of the income of tho trust fund of £1,200,000, not for its accumulation throughout the duration of the trust. Ten per cent of the income is paid to the holder of the title of Viscount Leverhulme, and 50 per cent is divided among the chairman and directors of Lover Bros, and associated companies. Of the remaining 40 per cent half is applied "for the purpose of artistic encouragement," and the other half is distributed among charities connected with commercial travellers, grocers and chemists, and their wives, widows and children. The distribution of the capital fund of the trust, which will not take place until many decades have passed, will bo on much the same lines as the distribution of.the annual income from it.