APPLICATION for COMMISSION

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29324, 1 October 1960, Page 11

APPLICATION for COMMISSION

Chalmers Estate Trustees

An application for £l9OO commission was made in the Supreme Court yesterday by William Hocken Rundle, of Ashburton, and William Archibald Smith, of Christchurch, in their capacity as trustees at the Chalmers estate.

Helen Jane Christina Merrick Chalmers, a spinster, who died at Ashburton in 1936, leaving an estate of a net value of £222,949 6s 9d, left half her estate to establish a fund for the Chalmers ward at the Christchurch Public Hospital and the other half for the upkeep of the women’s ward at the Ashburton Public Hospital.

The application by Rundle and Smith was made under the Trustees Act, 1956.

Mr R. M. Young appeared for both trustees. Mr G. H. Gould appeared for the North Canterbury Hospital Charitable Aid Board, named as the first defendant, and Mr J. G. Leggat for the Ashburton Hosoital Board, named as the second defendant. Mr Justice MacarthUr reserved his decision.

Mr Young said that itundle and Smith had been trustees of Miss Chalmers’s estate for 24 years and now proposed to retire because they were getting on in years and not in good health. An application for commission was made before the Court by the trustees in 1944. The application was granted. It was for assets which had been realised for death duties and legacies. However, the assets realised had in part been assets subsequently held for the residue of the estate and had required to be reinvested.

Counsel for the North Canterbury Hospital Board would question whether the Court had the power to allow commission to trustees in respect of assets which were not distributed, Mr Young said. He submitted that the Court had such power, and that in an estate forming a trust over such a long period, it was not expedient that assets should be distributed but should be invested as trust securities. Legal submissions were made by Mr Gould and Mr Leggat who were in agreement that the Court should award the trustees such amount of commission as It held legally proper.