Oddities in Wills.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 181, 4 December 1886, Page 2

Oddities in Wills.

Simple a matter as it really is, lawyers have not always been successful in drawing their own wills. Lord St. Leonard, High Chancellor of England, who, as Edward Sugden, was the moßt eminent Chancery lawyer in England, and who, with a number of law books, one particularly with a very elaborate chapter on drawing wills, drew his own will, and it required an expensive lawsuit and the decision of a Court of Chancery to give it proper effect. The will of Lord Westbury, another Lord High Chancellor, drawn by himself, met with the same fate. I could give you many similar instances. There have been devises to animals or for their benefit which have been held valid — to cats, dogs, horses, and even parrots. Not unfrequently people have undertaken to show their spite and hatred, and sometimes their humour, in wills. The will of Lord Pembroke in the 17th century has several items of that kind. For instance :—": — " I give nothing to my Lord Saye, and I do make him this legacy willingly, because I know that he will faithfully distribute it unto the poor. Item I give up the ghost." Lord Bacon had no property to leave, but he left a regularly executed will, in which he bequeathed his name "to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and the next ages." Shakespeare left an elaborate will, which contains a clause that has puzzled the Shakespeareans not a little :— " I give unto my wife my second beat bed, with the furniture." Why did he only give Ann Hathaway his second best and not his best bed? Nothing else did she get, and the will has been sought in vain to know the reason why. Lord Nelson left a will, drawn just before he went into the battle of Trafalgar, by which he bequeathed Lady Hamilton and her daughter to his king and country, but neither king nor country accepted the legacy, and they both came to j want, Lady Hamilton dying in abject porerty. Napoleon in his will left a handsome legacy to a wretch named Chatillion, who had attempted to assassinate Wellington. Tho will of Rabelais has this clause : — "I have no available property ; I owe a great deal ; the rest I give to tho poor." His last words when dying were — " Igo to see the great Perhaps." A famous French abbe had this pithy clause in his will — "To my steward I leave nothing, because he has been in my service for 18 years." Ifc is not unusual for a man to leave all his property to his wife, with the prevision that if she marriee again she is to have only what the law allows her. I have drawn a number of such wills. Governor Morris, the celebrated American statesman, did not treat hia wife bo. He had married very latein life Ann Randolph, a cousin of John, of Roanoke, a woman much younger than himself, with whom he lived very happily. Ho bequeathed a very handsome income to her, and then provided that in case she married again the income should be doubled. A soldier or a sailor ia allowed to make a nuncupative will— that ie, a will by word of mouth, by which personal estate may be disposed of; but you, being a civilian, must make yours in writing. It don't matter much what tho writing is on— it may be on a slate, or a table top, or even a wall, though it is advisable that it should be on paper or parchment. You may write it and sipn your name in pencil if you like, but it is better to do it in ink. You may make your will in Choctaw, if you happen to understand that language, or it may, as Hamlet says, " be writ in the choicest Italian," you may write it in shorthand, or in abbreviations, or in cypher, so long as you leave the key behind you. Courts are not martinets as to the spoiling, and if your orthography is not perfectly ultra, they will not mind it, if they can mako it out. If you wish to drop into poetry, even that is permitted, as the fol- | lowing case of a valid will ehovvs :—: — i I uive micl bequeath. When I'm laid underneath, Tn my Jovins? sisters most dear, The whole of my store. j Were it rwice^is much more, Which God's Koodness has granted to me. Aid that none may prevent This, my will and intent. Or occasion the lea*t of law racket, With n solemti appeal, 1 confirm, sign and teal. This, the true act and deed of Will Jacket.