Divorced Wife Leaves Home to Foster Son

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 831, 27 November 1929, Page 1

Divorced Wife Leaves Home to Foster Son

HUSBAND’S CLAIM

BOUGHT WITH SAVINGS

Claiming that his divorced wife, who died last year, had wrongly bequeathed a house property bought with his money during their married life together, to another man, Henry Alderton, a ship’s fireman, sought to recover the dwelling from William Whiteford, an insurance agent, the executor of Louisa Alderton, before Mr. Justice Smith in the Supreme Court today. The Aldertons, who were childless, took in and brought up Whiteford from a boy after he was left an orphan, according to the evidence. The house property, which Alderton now claims, is situated in Flower Street, Eden Terrace. Mr. Sullivan conducted the plaintiff’s case and Mr. Bennett appeared for the defendant. In the witness box Alderton said that when he married in February, 1892, he was in constant employment as a ship’s fireman, and his wife was penniless. They lived together until 1913, during which time he handed his wife all his wages, portion of which she banked regularly to enable them to buy a home. In 1910, when he was a watchman for the Northern Steamship Company, he bought a house in Parnell for £335, the property being registered in his wife's name because of the danger of his being drowned while rescuing people who fell overboard. The following year this house was sold for £460. The proceeds were used to buy the Eden Terrace property, now before the court, the property regaining in Mrs. Alderton’s name. SOUGHT SEPARATION Two years later his wile applied for a separation order, but was refused it by the magistrate, who held witness to be a "model husband.” He successfully sued for divorce the following year, and in both courts it was recognised that the properties had been bought with his money. It was. arranged after the divorce that she should continue to live there until her death. When she died last year she left him nothing, and bequeathed the house to Whiteford, whom witness and his wife had taken in as an orphan boy and brought up, though he had never been adopted. Cross-examined, witness refuted the suggestion that he had even applied for money from his wife’s bank account and had been refused. He was unable to explain where the £143 shown in the bank book for 1903 came from, nor could he understand how his wife banked £2 10s weekly, when he was earning £2 5s weekly. In explanation of the fact that his wife had deposited £2ll in the Post Office Savings Bank and £77 in the Auckland Savings Bank, he sometimes earned £5 and £lO rewards for notifying fires on boats. He estimated that in 1910 his earnings averaged £4 to £5 weekly. He denied the suggestion that Marshall, his brother-in-law, had ever given him money to bank, or that he had ever discussed a loan with the latter. PLAINTIFF’S RIGHTS

A retired solicitor, William E. Haekett, who acted for Alderton in the separation and maintenance proceedings in the Magistrate’s Court in 1913, said that the dispute was settled out of Court on the basis of recognition of plaintiff’s rights in the proP An application by Mr. Bennett for a nonsuit on the ground that there was no corroboration that the money used in purchasing the property belonging to plaintiff was reserved. In evidence, Whiteford said that since he was two years of age, he had lived with the Aldertons, until Mrs. Alderton’s death. A brother of Mrs. Alderton, John Marshall, came to live at the house in 1908. Witness had been left the house and £3OO in the bank. . , John Marshall, a brother-in-law of plaintiff, said that when he visited Auckland he gave Mrs. Alderton, his sister, various sums to bank in her name. (Proceeding.)