A TESTATOR'S ESTATE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 150, 22 December 1914, Page 4

A TESTATOR'S ESTATE

HOW RESIDUARY MONEYS ARE TO BE DIVIDED. His Honour Mr. Justice Hosking has delivered judgmont at the Supreme Court in the will case of the Public Trustee (plaintiff) as trustee in the estate of Alexander Macdonald, deceased, ' and Alice Catherine Macdonald and others, children and grandchildren of tho deceased (defendants). The testator, by his will' declared that the trustee should hold his residuary moneys and investments "in trust to pay the income thereof to my son and my two daughters in equal shares, and from and after the decease of all my children to divide the corpus equally among all my grandchildren, who being sons, shall attain the ago of twenty-one years, or, being daughters, shall attain that age or marry." At the date of the will and of the testator's death he had one soq and four daughters. Two of the daughters were married at the date of the will, and the two questions raised for tho opinion of Court were : —(1) For what person or persons and upon what trusts does tU«3 Public Trustee hold the income arising from the residuary estate of the deceased Until the arrival of the period of distribution of J.he corpus of the residuary estate? (2) Whether, upon any of the persons who may be held to be now entitled to_ share in the income dying before the arrival of the period of distribution, his or her share of income accrues to the survivor or survivors (if any) of the persons so held to be entitled, or whether $uch share of income, pending the arrival of the period of distribution, was undisposed of .' His Honour held that both questions might be best answered together thus : The income arising from the residuary estate is held by. the Public Trustee upon trust to pay income in equal shares to Ihe son and the four daughters, or to such of _ them as shall be living for the time being dowi to the period of distribution, that is, the death of the last survivor of them, so that while two or more are for the time being living the income gee's to them in equal shares, arid the last survivor gets the whole during the period of last survivorship. As the difficulties had been created by the testator, his Honour directed that the ''costs of the parties (to be fixed by the Registrar at 'Wellington as between solicitor and client) be 'paid out of the residuary estate, the Public Trustee's costs to be determined in accordance with office regulations. When 'the case was argued in Chambers, Mr. J. W. Macdonald, with Mr. F. E. Kelly, appeared for the Public Trustee and the grandchildren, and Mr. J. Maclean (of Napier) for the -children.