Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 1925. UNUSUAL WILLS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 40, 15 August 1925, Page 6

Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 1925. UNUSUAL WILLS

The testator who makes his own will has long been a favourite with the legal profession. His posthumous value in fees to the lawyers was celebrated by Lord Neaves, the learned and witty Scotch Judge, in some verses which adjured them to keep green the memory of so great a benefactor:

When a festive occasion your spirit unbends, You should never forget the profes- ■ sion's best friends; So . we'll send round' the wine and a light bumper fill To the jolly testator who makes his own will.

The Earl of Ypres appears to have made his. own will — an eight-line document is irresistibly suggestive of.amateur work—but its interpretation is evidently not going to provide the lawyers with a gold-mine of litigation. Its meaning is perfectly clear, but the profession, still scores, for the whole property is left to a London solicitor. The bequest of an estate worth £25,000 to a. stranger in blood is a very jolly business for the lawyer who receives it. But the entire exclusion of the family, for which neither the will nor the family itself offers any explanation, has naturally excited the curiosity and sympathy of the public. The nine days' wonder which has been created by this eight-line will is heightened by the fact that the burden of the title which was created for the testator's benefit passes to his eldest son. Family and personal pride might have been expected, even if natural affection was insufficient, to make the necessary provision for th ye purpose. To what extent the war services grant of £50,000, which is vested in the Public Trustee for the benefit of the family, will be available on this account does not appear. The widow, who was already well provided for with a legacy of £80,000 from the Ctfuntess of Charlemont's estate, has presumably a life-inter-est in this grant, and after her death the present earl will have a brother and sister to share the fund, or possibly only a life-inter-est therein, with him. The nation has certainly a right to feel that the honour of the title was insufficiently considered by the first Earl ■of Ypres when he made his will, but a stronger sympathy is naturally aroused by the indignity which he has inflicted on his family. The doubt will at the same time be strengthened whether under the influence of caprice, spite, or ill temper, or even of an estrangement for which he may not be wholly to blame, a testator should be allowed to do exactly as he will with his own, in complete disregard of all natural claims and of the liability that he may be, imposing on the State. For a quarter of a century the Testator's Family Maintenance Acts of New Zealand have set limits to this power, but the provision is neither so far-reaching nor so definite as that of the old common law which divided a man's personal property on his death into three parts,■■of which two were reserved for his wife and children and the third alone was subject to the dispositions of his will.

Considerations of another kind are presented by the extraordinary testamentary procedure of another member of* the British aristocracy which was reported three weeks ago. Lord Ourzon, one of the correctest and most strait-laced of men, left a document purporting to be testamentary, in which he expressed in the plainest terms his opinion of former colleagues,. including evidently Mr. Lloyd George. By tho manner in which Lord Campbell wrote two series of judicial biographies he was said to have added a new terror to death, but why Lord Curzon of all men should by a kind of inversion of the process have sought to add a new terror to survival and to make a Probate Court the vehicle of his censures surpasses comprehension. It would have been interesting to see how he attempted to give a testamentary form to his legacy of ill-will to his late chief; but it is certainly in the public interest that the publication was suppressed. It is also gratifying to find that there are safes and key-holes through which the X-ray curiosity of an eavesdropping Press cannot penetrate.

Jokes and criticisms and even gross libels have often enough found their way into wills, and sometimes they seem to have eluded the vigilance of the Court which granted probate. An historic example is the will of the fifth Earl of Pembroke, of which an official copy is preserved in the records of Doctors' Commons. How skilfully he scoffed at friend and foe alike under the guise of presenting them with legacies is shown by the following samples :—

of the Parliament will consider that even this sum is too large. . Item : I give to the Lieutenant-General Cromwell one of my words, the which he must want, seeing • that he hath never kept any of his own.

We may well believe that literature and humour have gained more than the dignity of the Court has lost by the admission of this will to probate. The legacy to Cromwell might have furnished' Lord Curzon with a model for his treatment of Mr. Lloyd Gebrge, but his was not the kind of wit to seize the opportunity, arid there was no excuse for admitting to probate the kind of criticism that he had sought to place there.