A CURIOUS CASE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1650, 4 June 1879, Page 3

A CURIOUS CASE.

A very curious case as to whether certain letters constituted a binding an' e nuptial contract has been dec d d by the Master of Rolls. It appeared that in the month of August, 1869, Dudley Raymond, then a lieutenant of her Majesty’s 14th Foot in India, proposed to marry the plaintiff, a daughter of the Eov, Mr Ellis, of Lucknow, and Mr Ellis wrote to Mr W. 0. Raymond, tho father of tho intended husband, and who was then in England, requesting him to make some settlement on his son. On the 22nd of September, 1869, Mr W. C. Raymond wrote to his son as follows:—“Of course if you marry Miss Ellis she will bo to mo as a daughter, and in the event of your death would receive your share of what property I might leave at my decease. More than what I have written to Mr Ellis I do not see my way clear to do without injuring your brother and sister; and you, knowing my affairs, will see it in that light.” A letter had been previously written to Mr Ellis, stating that Mr Raymond would allow his son £l5O, but Mr Ellis replied that this was not satisfactory, and Mr W. 0. Raymond again wrote to Mr Ellis on the Ist of December, 1869, as follows: —"I am most anxious that there should be no misunderstanding between us. I have already told you what I am disposed to do—namely, to allow Dudley £l5O, and in the event of your daughter becoming his widow and surviving me, to leave her the share which Dudley would have taken under my will. Beyond this I cannot go,” On the same day the marriage was solemnized in India. Dudley Raymond died in his father’s life-time, and his widow now claimed onethird of W. 0. Raymond’s estate, he having made a will whereby Mrs Raymond received nothing. Mr Chitty, Q. 0., for Mrs Dudley Raymond, contended that tho letters constituted a valid ante-nuptial contract, and that Mrs Dudley Raymond was entitled to an equal share with the testator’s children. Tho Master of the Rolls said that tho letters merely stated what might happen, and were never meant to bind Mr Raymond to give his son any definite share of his property. The letter of the 22nd of September, 1869, was not agreed to, and the letter of the Ist December had not arrived in India when the marriage took place, so the marriage could not have been solemnized on the faith of it. There was, in fact, no contract, and tho claim must be disallowed. It reminded him of tho old saying, “ A civilian is worth £3OO a year, dead or alive.”