PROBATE OF A MUTILATED WILL.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3594, 18 January 1883, Page 4

PROBATE OF A MUTILATED WILL.

The opening of the sittings in the Probate Division, on the 3rd inst., was signalised by a very curious Avill case of " Waight v. Waight." The U:A:\tor was an engineer on board a Channel steamer, and had made a will in the year 1870, by which he left everything to his wife. He gave the will to her to keep. Some little time afterwards the husband and wife had a. quarrel, and the wife, losing her temper, tore up the will and threw (he'pieccs into the fireplace. The husband picked them up again, put them in an envelope, labelled poison, which he put into his pocket. Afterwards he told her he would get the will put straight again. But on his death, in June I SSI, which look place from small-pox in his berth on board the steamer, his pockets being searched, the envelope, with the shreds of the will, was found. It was now propounded for probate by the wife, and. after formal opposition on behalf of ten children, admitted, because, though the presumption of law is that, if a will be found in a testator's possession in a. mutilated condition, it was intended to be renewed by him (" Lambert v. Lambert," 3 Hagg. 50S) : yet, under the circumstances, the presumption was rebutted by its being shown that the testator had not himself mutilated it, and also that he had no roiimx-s rcrocrrudl. The case, however, should be a lesson to angry wives not to risk'their subsistence to satisfy a momentary spleen.—■ LaAV Journal.