BANKRUPT'S WIFE SUED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21278, 3 September 1932, Page 10

BANKRUPT'S WIFE SUED

money spent on her land PAYMENT .TO ASSIGNEE ORDERED [by telegraph—own correspondent] NAPIER, Friday That a bankrupt's wife should show cause, why she should not be ordered to pay to the official assignee the sum of £629 2s Bd, being the amount expended by her husband on her lands within two years prior to his being adjudged bankrupt, formed the basis of a case heard before Mr. Justice Ostler in the Supreme Court, Napier, when the official assignee in the bankrupt estate of Percy Boyland sought, under section 76 of the Bankruptcy Act, to recover certain moneys expended by the bankrupt. In the course of his judgment this week, His Honor said it was an uncontested fact that within a year of his bankruptcy the bankrupt had incurred the expenditure of £731 lis 5d in erecting buildings on land that was the property jof his wife, who owned two adjoining freehold sections at Greenmeadows and a, leasehold section in Dickens Street, Napier. A temporary shop and dwelling were erected on the leasehold property and a small cottage on one of the freehold sections. The summons was opposed on the grounds that section 76 of the Bankruptcy Act had no application to leasehold lands, but His Honor held that the word "land," as used in the section of the Act, meant every interest in land and included leasehold. If this were not so a husband could expend moneys on his wife's 999 years' leasehold interest and laugh at his creditors.

In a further contention it was apparent both from the terms of the lease and from the fact that the buildings on the leasehold were merely temporary and must soon be removed that flie leasehold interest was practically unsaleable. His Honor thought such a constiuction would defeat the intention of the Act. His Honor ordered that the wife of the bankrupt pay to the official assignee tho sum of £629 2s Bd, and that there would be a direction to the assignee that if there was failure to comply with the order lie should sell such lands or part thereof as he thought fit and to convey or transfer tlie same to the purchaser.