CLAIM FOR SUPPORT

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 250, 18 July 1931, Page 9

CLAIM FOR SUPPORT

Daughter Receives £lOOO FAMILY PROTECTION ACT Giving reserved judgment yesterday in a ease in which Isabella Kinnear Butchart made application for proper maintenance and support out of the estate of her husband, David Butchart, deceased, the Court of Appeal held that New Zealand courts had jurisdiction to make an order under the Family Protection Act, in respect of the immovables in New Zealand of a testator dying domiciled abroad. During the hearing of the case it wan stated that David Butchart died in Dundee, Scotland, in January, 1928, leaving a will in which he bequeathed his whole estate to his niece, Mrs. Annie Paxton. He left a widow and eight children. The widow had come to New Zealand in 1909 with several of her children to join her son, James Butchart, who had settled in Hamilton, and taken up a bakery business there. According to Mrs. Bntcfiart's affidavit the conduct of her husband had compelled her to leave him in 1897. and since then she had neither seen nor heard from him. She had by her own endeavours and those of James Butchart supported the younger members of her family. James Butchart died in August, 1927, a widower, childless and intestate, his whole estate, valued at £BOOO, passing under the Statute of Distribution to his father in Scotland. Shortly after the father was made aware of his accession to the fortune of his son he made a will in favour of his niece. On the death of David Butchart his widow filed the proceedings now before the court, but died before they came on for hearing, and her daughter, Alice Butchart, of Cambridge, spinster, was substituted as plaintiff. The question submitted to the Appeal Court was whether New Zealand courts had jurisdiction under the Family Protection Act to make an order in respect of a movable or immovable estate in. New Zealand of a person who died leaving a will domiciled in Scotland. In its judgment the court expressed the opinon that it could not be. said that, in view of the amount which .the widow received under Scotch law, she had been left without adequate provision. So far as the daughter Alice Butchart was concerned, an order was made that she. be paid out of the land of the testator situated in New Zealand, the sum of £lOOO with interest thereon at six per cent until the date of payment to hen,