INTERESTING WILL CASE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3112, 5 November 1913, Page 54

INTERESTING WILL CASE.

APPEAL TO FULL COURT. WELLINGTON, October 21. There died in Blenheim an old man who had made a will some three years ago leaving about £7OOO to two relatives, a brother and a niece, living in Ireland. When he was dying the man expressed a desire to Richard Webb Jenkins, manager of the Bank of New South Wales, to alter his will. There was no time to make a fresh will, and, so the deceased (Samuel Hoggard) gave Jenkins an order on the Public Trustee (witnessed by the secretary cf the hospital board and a nurse) for £2500, the money to be received and applied by Jenkins in paying certain charities. The old man died the next day before the order which Jenkins drew could be presented. In the event of the deceased surviving his illness it had been arranged between the parties that the money was to be held in trust by Jenkins until the death of the deceased. The Public Trustee, however, refused to take cognisance of the order, and as a sequel the Full Court of the judges of the Supreme Court was to-day asked to determine the following questions: (1) Whether the document was a will; (2) whether it ws a valid donatio mortis causa, inoperative by reason of non-pay-ment in the deceased’s liftetime. Sir John Findlay, K.C., and Mr Hoggard appeared for the plaintiff, Jenkins, and Mr J. Macdonald, solicitor to the Public Trust Office, with him Mr F. E. Kelly, for the defendant, the Public Trustee. The* Public Trustee is the executor of the deceased’s will under a will dated April 4, 1910, whereby he appointed the Public Trustee executor, and after setting apart a sum of £IOO as a legacy for the choir of the local church, gave the residue of his property to his brother Thomas and a niece. For some time before the death of the deceased, on August 27, 1913, the Public Trustee acted as his agent. In his argument Sir John Findlay contended that the document was in reality a codicil to the will of the deceased appointing the plaintiff trustee. After hearing the arguments of counsel, who stated that it had been arranged on both sides, if the court so ordered, that the cost of the proceedings should come out of the estate, the court intimated that judgment would be reserved.