Failure Of Son’s Claim On Father’s Estate

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31753, 9 August 1968, Page 8

Failure Of Son’s Claim On Father’s Estate

An only son’s application, under the Family Protection Act, for further provision from his father’s $14,000 estate was disallowed in the Supreme Court yesterday, Mr Justice Wilson saying that it was brought out of time and was a claim without merit.

The plaintiff, Lester Wilfred Landery, a commission salesman (Mr J. G. Rutherford), had been left by his father, Clarence Wilfred Landery, a retired mercer, the income for life from a trust fund of $4OOO, with recourse to capital at the discretion of the trustees, but sought "more definite provision” on the ground that this had been his father’s intention.

Mr Rutherford, after pointing out that the residue of Mr Landery senior’s estate had been left to his daughter, Ngalre Shirley Anderson

(Mr P. H. T. Alpers), said that it was a case of a testator dying with rather more money than he had expected at the time he made his will. It bad been his intention, submitted Mr Rutherford, to leave his son an approximate half of his estate. His Honour said: “The only evidence of that is in the affidavit of the plaintiff himself—an interested party.” His Honour observed that the plaintiff bad already received from an aunt a legacy of $l5OO which had “disappeared like magic” and had, in a compensation claim, recovered damages which he had been “too coy” to disclose to the Court. (Mr Rutherford later told his Honour they amounted to $2500.) The plaintiff, said his Honour, bad shown himself a very poor manager of money, and Incapable of handling a capital sum. His father, in setting aside for him a trust fund of $4OOO, bad made full and complete performance of the moral duty he owed him.

His Honour, without calling on other parties—Mr Landery senior’s trustees, Gerald Ross Lascelles and Kenneth John Brookman, solicitors (Mr J. G. Leggat) and Mrs Anderson (Mr Alpers)—said he regarded toe claim as without merit, and therefore refused Mr Rutherford’s application for the necessary extension Of time in which to bring it The plaintiff was also ordered to pay his own costs