SUPREME COURT Further Provision For Widow Ordered

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31456, 24 August 1967, Page 6

SUPREME COURT Further Provision For Widow Ordered

An estranged wife who under her husband’s will would have received only $5BB, while his housekeeper was left a legacy of $lOOO, was granted increased provision of $2OOO in a Family Protection Act suit brought in the Supreme Court yesterday. The plaintiff, Lilian Rose Stubbs, now a widow (Mr R. F. B. Perry), who claimed against the $3050 estate of Henry George Stubbs, a Uno-typist,-who died on March $O, NO6, had boon left to share with her two daughters the residue of Ms estate, after a legacy of $lOOO, and two cars valued St $B5O, to Julia Hermans Visker, his housekeeper (Mr L D. Bennetts). Mr Justice Wilson said he found on the facte that Stubbs’s separation from his Wife was caused by his own "unreasonable suspicion" about her association with a man 20 years younger than herself, and that in his will he had failed in his moral duty to provide for her. "The suspicion which he gave expression to was completely unfounded,” his Honour said. ’ His Honour also described submissions by Mr Bennetts about Mrs Stubbs’s association with a younger man as "the pot calling the kettle black’’— for it was clear, said his Honour, that Stubbs and Mrs Visker had been Uving together. Accepting Mr Perry’s sub-

mission that the estate was too small to provide ’ worthwhile income, his Honour varied Stubbs’s will to allow his widow $2OOO in cash. Mrs Maker's legacy would have to provide much of this sum, although he would exonerate $2OO in Mrs Viskers’s favour, his Honour said. Stubbs, with such a small estate, had not been justified in leaving Mrs Visker $lOOO, even though be had reason to be grateful for her help given in his illness, said his Honour. At any rate, Mrs Visker had already benefited by obtaining a section of land at Burwood, which had been bought in Stubbs's and her joint finnM Any residue in' Stubbs’s estate after the new provisions would be shared by his two daughters, his Honour directed. Costs out of the estate were awarded only to the plaintiff and to the executor, the Public Trustee (Mr D. F. Parris). Mr R. R. Templeton appeared for Stubbs’s two daughters, who did not oppose their mother’s application.