THREE LEGAL WIVES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 May 1938, Page 4

THREE LEGAL WIVES

DEATH OF ENGLISHMAN IN FRANCE. A PUZZLE FOR LAWYERS. The death o£ an Englishman in France was followed by claims to his estate from three “widows.” For more than 20 years he had lived in turn with each of these three women as her husband. In the absence of fresh facts the lawyers are forced to admit the legality of each claim. The man, Henry James Clayton, who had lived in France for about 30 years, and was believed to be a representative of a Yorkshire firm of cloth weavers, was killed in a motor accident on the road to Grenoble from Paris. Following a report of the tragedy, a woman living in one of the Paris suburbs came forward and declared she was the widow of Clayton. Everything seemed in order, and arrangements were going forward for the recognition of the woman as widow and sole heir of the dead man, when the authorities had a surprise in the appearance of a second woman possessing similar documentary evidence. Now a third has appeared with the same claim. Each woman insists that she is the real Louise Marie Reval. Now. all the lawyers can say is that while it is clear the French law does not recognise the legal existence of three women of the same name, born in the same town on the same day, in the absence of evidence to prove which is the real one, the law must regard their claims as equal.