Legitimacy Claim By Author’s Daughter

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30157, 14 June 1963, Page 11

Legitimacy Claim By Author’s Daughter

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright)

NICE, June 12. <

A civil Court today reserved judgment in a family dispute over Somerset Maugham’s adoption of his 57-vear-old secretary as his son.

Mr Maugham's daughter. Lady John Hope, wife of a former British Cabinet Minister. contested the French adoption order at the hearing, which was held in camera. She attended the three-hour

court session, but Mr Maugham and his secretary, Mr Alan Searle, were not present.

Lady Hope claimed she was Mr Maugham's legitimate daughter and that the adoption by Mr Maugham of his secretary was null and void under French law. which required the consent of any legitimate child. Lady sope also claimed that a birth certificate named her parents as Syrie Barnardo and Somerset Maugham, although the certificate contained spelling mistakes making the names Bernard and Maucham.

She said that an English law passed in 1959 made recognition of an adulterous child by the father possible.

It had resulted automatically in her legitimacy Somerset Maugham's lawyers replied that Lady Hope's mother was the legal wife of Henry Welcome when Lady Hope was born. As Mr Welcome had never legally repudiated paternity. Lady Hope was legally his daughter. They said that the birth certificate showing Mr Maugham as the father was signed only by an employee of a Rome maternity clinic and did not constitute recognition of Mr Maugham’s paternity either by Mr Maugham or the law. They added that conditions for legitimising Lady Hope as Maugham's daughter under English Jaw had not beer, fulfilled.