A MAORI WILL.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 September 1921, Page 2

A MAORI WILL.

AN INTERESTING CASE. Until the passing of the West Coast Settlements Reserves Act Amendment, 1913, Maoris in the Taranaki districts were unable to divide lands by will; their interests in land went by succession to their next-of-kin. Since the passing of the Act, however, which gave the natives in this district the freehold, alienation by will has been allowed. The consequence has been that the relatives of an aged Maori have not been slow to realise that by looking after the aged person in his declining years they have the chance of being the favored one in his last will and testament. Sometimes comparative strangers take charge of the old man or woman for the same purpose. The outcome is often ventilated in the Native Land Court, One such case came before the Native Land Court at Hawera in July, and was adjourned to New Plymouth, the hearing being completed on Monday. An old woman named Naraura, of Rahotu, aged 75, had, a month before she died, made a will leaving all her estate, which was pretty considerable, to distant relatives named Wi Kupe and his daughter, with whom she had been living during the last few months of her life. She excluded by this Will an adopted son, also a nephew and other close relatives. Probate of this will was applied for before Judge Acheson, Judge of the Native Land Court. The evidence showed that the deceased native was not attended by a doctor in her last illness, and the will was prepared by a native woman from the Waikato, who acts as a native agent. At the conclusion of the evidence Mr. Bennett addressed the Court on the facts of the case, and traversed the evidence at length. Mr. O’Dea dealt with the law relating to wills, and submitted that where a will was made under suspicious circumstances a court would refuse probate. As one judge in the High Courts in England had said, “the conscience of the Court must be satisfied that the will is the will of a free and independent testator.”

Mr. Jack contended that if there were any suspicious circumstances these had been cleared up by the witnesses. The Judge, in his decision, said that at the outset he had viewed the whole case with suspicion, that this suspicion had deepened as the case went on, and he was not satisfied that the testator knew and approved of the will. It was contrary to Maori nature for a woman to leave out her adopted son in the disposition of her bounty. He said that wills of old Maori people made practically on their deathbeds were too common in Taranaki, and he would require very strong evidence indeed in similar cases before he would grant probate. Probate in the case before him was refused, and the will, set aside Star,