THE EGGSHELL WILL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19957, 26 November 1926, Page 9

THE EGGSHELL WILL

HELD TO BE INVALID

DECISION OF PROBATE COURT. (Press Association —By Telegraph—Copyright.) LONDON, November 24. (Received Nov. 25, at 5.5 p.m.) The Probate Court ruled against the eggshell will. It found that the handwriting was Barnes’s, but the will could not be accepted as a testamentary disposition. It appeared about as grotesque an act as was possible for any man who had engaged in the serious undertakings of life. —A. and N.Z. Cable. “Mag, everything I possess.—J.B.” This, written in indelible pencil on an eggshell, constituted perhaps one of the strangest wills ever exhibited at the Probate Court. The widow of John Barnes, a ship’s pilot, said that she fo.-d the eggshell on the top of a wardrobe after her husband’s death, and she urged that it should replace the previous will in whicn she was granted £4OO, and others benefited largely. The estate is valued at over £SOOO. Counsel submitted that the will came within the exceptions under the Wills Act —namely, that Barnes was virtually a seaman at sea.