INCHCAPE WILL

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 137, 6 December 1935, Page 4

INCHCAPE WILL

ALTERATIONS OF NO EFFECT

A judgment given in the Edinburgh' Court of Session recently ruled that pencilled alterations in the will of the late Earl of Inchcape. had no testamentary effect, says the "Daily Telegraph." Questions before the Court concerned the legal effect of alterations in the will of October 22, 1929. The parties to the case were the accepting trustees and executors acting under the will and others, and the children and grandchildren of Lord Inchcape.

The Court decided that the pencilled alterations, deletions, and interlineations shown on the will have no testamentary effect and that the will as originally executed represented the final testamentary dispositions of the testator.

Giving judgment. Lord Normand, the Lor.d President, said that by his pencilled alterations Lord Inchcape deleted, the name of his son-in-law the Hon. Alexander Shaw, .from among his trustees. He also deleted the name of his daughter. Lady Margaret Shaw, and her issue from the residuary clause, with the result that if these alterations were given effect to they would not participate to any great extent in the residue.

Lord Normand regarded the will as altered to be really instructions sent by the testator to his law agents in order that they might prepare a draft for his final consideration.

The Lord President thought that the conclusion . that Lord Inchcape ,had never executed any deed expressive of his final testamentary intention other than the will executed on October 22, 1929, was almost irresistible.