CLAIM AGAINST ESTATE

Taranaki Daily News, 22 December 1930, Page 9

CLAIM AGAINST ESTATE

TESTATOR IN SCOTLAND.

QUESTION OF JURISDICTION.

. “You may start off with the assumption that James Butchart is probably turning in his grave,” remarked, the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Myers, in the Supreme Court at Wellington, when an application under tfhe Family Protection Act was being explained by counsel.

The case was one in which Alice Butchart, of Cambridge, claimed provision out of the estate of David Butchart, who died recently in Scotland, leaving about £7OOO to his niece, Annie Paxton, also of Scotland. The whole-of the estate had come to the testator through the death of his, son, James Butchart, who had acquired the property in New Zealand. It consisted partly of movables and partly of immovables, all situated in New Zealand. •

James Butchart made a will in favour of his mother. Then he married, and made a new will in his wife’s favour. His wife, the sole beneficiary, predeceased him, and later he died intestate, the whole of the estate going to his father, who left it. to his niece. “It must be quite plain,” observed his Honour at a later stage in the proceedings, “that James never intended to leave a to his father, or that this substantial sum should go through his father to someone he never knew.”

The principal question was whether the court had jurisdiction to make an order in a case where the testator was not domiciled in New Zealand, and had never been resident in New Zealand, and particularly where the claimants had rights under Scottish law to certain portions of the estate.

After legal argument the hearing was adjourned.