HUSBAND’S ALLOWANCE

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 June 1937, Page 12

HUSBAND’S ALLOWANCE

WIDOW'S SEPARATION. "LONDON, May 5. The House of Lords held yesterday that, a separation deed to pay a wife £2 a week during her life was still, enforceable after her husband’s death. , The appeal, which was against a majority decision of the Court of Ap-peal—-when Mr Justice Eve dissented from Lords Justices Slesser and Scott—was allowed, with costs.

Mrs Annie Mary Kirk, -widow of Tr Thomas L. Kirk, a Hull, butcher, asked the House of Lords to say, in effect, that she was still “living apart’’ from her husband, in the language of the deed, although he had died. The respondents were the husband's executors. Mr Richard Elwes, for Mrs Kirk, said the separation deed was made in September, 1922. Under it, Mr Kirk agreed to pay her £2 weekly without any deduction during her life so long as she continued to live a chaste life.

In Hull County Court,.Mrs Kirk had claimed against the executors for £2O alleged to be due under the deed. Of that sum £8 was said to be due before Mr Kirk died, and the executors paid the £8 into court. The dispute was over the balance of £l2 calculated from the date of the husband’s death until the county court action.

Mr Willoughby Jardine. K.C. for the executors, ,submitted that the essence of the deed was that the parties should live apart and that both should be living at any lime that an attempt was niade to enforce the deed. The husband am! wife could no longer properly be said, to be living apart alter the husband's death. Lord Atkin, in his judgment, said it appeared to him that no question could arise that, the husband's estate was liable to pay the £2 a week to the wife during her life, lie was unable to accept the view taken by the majority in the Court of Appeal that the main object of the deed was to provide for the parties living apart, and that on the death of the husband they could no longer ho said to live apart.

It. was revealed last night that for the past few months Mrs Kirk had been living on a public assistance allowance of 15/- a week.

“The success of my appeal moans the end of all my troubles,” she said. "The 15/- a week has meant bread and butter and nothing else."