CAB129-35 — Page 156

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C. P. (49) 125

20TH JUNE, 1949

CABINET

COPY NO.

31.

MOUNT BATTEN ESTATE BILL

Memorandum by the Lord Chancellor

In view of the controversy which is likely to arise on the Second Reading of the Mountbatten Estate Bill in the House of Commons, I have been asked by the Lord President of the Council to circulate a memorandum so that the Cabinet may consider what attitude should be taken towards the Bill by the Government.

2.

The Bill has passed the House of Lords and is due for Second Reading in the Commons shortly. Mr. Conolly Gage, Sir John Mellor, Captain John Crowder, Mr. Walker Smith, Mr. Hollis and Lieutenant-Commander Gurney Braithwaite have the following notice of a Motion on the order paper:-

"To oppose the Second Reading on the ground that the

Bill seeks to make, for an individual, an amendment of the law which, if justifiable, should be made by Public Act for the benefit of all whom it may concern.

There has also been some pressure from Married Women's Societies and in the Press for general legislation.

3.

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The object of the Bill is to enable Countess Mountbatten of Burma to secure the removal of the restraint upon anticipation which is attached

so long as she remains married to a life interest to which she is entitled in certain income from the estate of her late grandfather, Sir Ernest Joseph Cassel, who died in 1921. amounts to £110,000 a year gross. After allowing for various charitable covenants and charges and deduction of tax, the net annual income at the present day is £4,500. This compares with a net annual income of £40,000 in 1939.

4.

This income

Restraints upon anticipation were invented in the eighteenth century to enable a person settling property on a married woman to protect it from the "Kicks and Kisses" of her husband. A restraint enables a married woman to receive the yearly income of the estate from the trustees as it falls due, but to prevent her from "anticipating" the future income by,* for example, raising money upon it for the benefit of her husband or his or her creditors.

5.

The Law Reform (Married Women and Tort Feasors) Act, 1935, was the culmination of a series of Acts to put married women in exactly the same position as regards their property as unmarried women. This Act abolished the device of restraints upon anticipation in the future, but did not affect restraints imposed by settlements executed before 1936, or restraints imposed by the wills, whenever executed, of testators dying before 31st December, 1945. There was some pressure at the time, particularly from the Married Women's Societies, for the total abolition of restraints, in the past and in the future. But in 1935 there was still some force in the argument that restrpjet 56 of 366ticipation did operate forpe 156 87 3660o married women, and the pressure for making the Bill retro- spective was resisted.

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