DISPUTE OVER A WILL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 152, 30 June 1932, Page 7

DISPUTE OVER A WILL

SUM OF £1,250,000 INVOLVED. LONDON, June 28. In the Probate Court, the Lord Justice of Appeal (Lord Merrivale) began the hearing of a dispute concerning £1,250,000 in the estate of the late Montague Stanley Napier, engine manufacturer. Henry Cooke, Napier’s executor, seeks to propound the will, supported by Napier’s brother, Walter. Under this Mrs. Nora Fryer, the widow of the testator, and a doctor arc the chief beneficiaries. Mrs. Napier, in contesting this, relies on earlier wills under which there was an annu ity for Walter and for each child. Reference was made to an affair between Napier and Mrs. Cadman, his typist, by whom he had a daughter. Mr. Cooke, for Napier, disclosed that trusts amounting to thousands sterling were prepared for them, but were never executed. He added that he was not aware that Napier’s father forced his wife into a heated room be for? she was accouched because she said it would benefit, the baby’s corn plexion. Mrs. Napier always found fault with her husband, who replied sarcastically, but was too courteous to show that he loathed her. Mr. Cooke

said he was aware that Napier was simultaneously engaged to two women in 1897.

Air. Turner Samuels, for Mrs Napier, said that when Napier published his marriage announcement he reversed his wife’s name, and gave the wrong register office, which showed he had a mental irregularity. He also gave evidence that Napier offered his wife a life annuity of £3OOO, but she insisted on £6OOO for their joint lives.