DISINHERITANCE

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3262, 19 February 1931, Page 7

DISINHERITANCE

SAFEGUARDS FOR WIDOWERS AND WIIDOIWS. Prominent lawyers are now engaged in framing a Bill which will have the effect of making it impossible for a man to disinherit his wife completely. c The Bill will be introduced into the House of Commons on 20th February by Miss Eleanor Rathbone, of Liverpool, Independent M,P. for the Combined English Universities. Miss Rathbone told a London Sunday Dispatch reporter that the greatest care was being taken to ensure that the terms of the Bill should be free from objection.

“ It is an extraordinary thing,” she said, “ that England should be one of the last countries to take steps to prevent a man leaving all his money away from his wife to an institution or an individual.

“All the Latin countries, whose judicial systems are founded on Roman law, have provisions safeguarding the rights of wives, and, of course, in Scotland the same thing applies. There at least one-third of the estate must go to the widow or widower, if there are children, and one-half if there are not. Any children receive one-third among them.” “My Bill, which women’s societies framed, will, it is hoped, avoid certain defects, in the Scottish Bill. “ In some of the dominions a widow may apply to the court if she is left destitute, but the Bill I am introducing will be much more far-reaching than that. It will apply to both men and women, though it is more often women who are the victims of the present state of the law.”