THE RIGHT OF BEQUEST

Evening Star, Issue 19796, 21 February 1928, Page 5

THE RIGHT OF BEQUEST

MAN WHO STOPPED UNJUST WILLS Principal Kick, of Parkin College, Adelaide, lias written the life of Joseph Coles Kirby, who went to Australia in 1851, joined the ministry of tho Congregational Church in 1863, and died in 1924. Principal Kick says in his preface to ‘An Apostle in Australia’ that Kirby “may fairly claim a place among the makers of Australia; few private citizens have clone morq|to iuJlucnce the course of legislation or have striven more manfully in the furtherance of social reform.” Many instances to justify this view' are given in the- course of the book, and we quote but one passage which is strikingly illustrative of the point, says ‘Public Opinion.’ One valuable reform which Kirby did much to make, possible was a limitation of tho-right of bequest—a right often exercised in the way of a wrong. Various cases came to Kirby's notice in which widows and orphans were left penniless as a result of palpable injustice on the part of testators. . . . Kirby resolved to put an end to such wrongs as these. As early as 1895 he stirred the South Australian Congregational Union on the subject. He studied the complexities of the law in regard to testamentary dispositions, and found that a Bill had been introduced in the House of Commons to meet the cases he bad in mind. This Bill had never become law, but _it served as a basis for a measure which Kirby drafted and brought to the notice of Mr W. H. Carpenter, M.P. Carpenter carried it several times in the Assembly, but the Legislative Council—ever sensitive for “the rights of property ” —threw it out. Finally the matter was taken up by Mr W. 0. Archibald, M.P. The Testator’s Family Maintenance Act at last became law (1918). It provided that widows and children under age, and children of any age who are wholly or partially unable to maintain themselves, may, if disinherited by will, appeal to the Supreme Court, which has power to. direct that a reasonable proportion of the estate shall be set apart lor their benefit. The mere existence of this law has had the effect of making the need for its application extremely rare.