OLD TRUST FUND.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 80, 2 March 1935, Page 3

OLD TRUST FUND.

WOMAN’S THIRD SHARE. Per Press Association. TIMARU, March 1. A judgment declaring that Isabelle Ellis Pattison, Auckland, spinster, was entitled to one-third share in a trust fund now valued at £19,227, established by the late Captain Henry Cain, formerly of Timaru, on Februay 26. 1870, was given by Mr Justice Johnston in the Supreme Court. Miss Pattison based her claim to participate in the trust fund on the ground that she was the daughter of Jane Ellis Espie, stepdaughter of Captain Cain. The mother of plaintiff contended that on the death of her first husband, William Johnson Newton, she married Jonathan Melvin Pattison, whom plaintiff asserted was her father. The defence was founded on the allegation that at the time Jane Ellis Newton married Pattison on July 5, 1886, her husband, William Newton was still living, that the second marriage was invalid, and that plaintiff was illegitimate and so not entitled to take under the deed of settlement of 1870, which related to legitimate children only. The Judge found there was no evidence sufficient to convince him that Newton was alive in July, 1886, and presumed him to be dead, and as it was a legitimate inference that Mrs Newton did not intend to commit bigamy, he shoiild uphold the second marriage. The defence' that the second marriage was invalid had failed, and plaintiff was entitled to a third share in the settled fund of 1870.