Principles and observations on many and various subjects, for the health of nations and individuals / by John Moodie.

  • Moodie, John.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Principles and observations on many and various subjects, for the health of nations and individuals / by John Moodie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    23/310 (page 7)
    WILLS OR TESTAMENTS. Testaments or Wills are of essential importance as a means of Wills or Tes- preventing disputes about the proper succession to property andtaments- wealth,—as to whom this or that may belong to, and who has a right to this, that, and the other article. By making a will, in general all disputes about to whom anything left by a deceased person belongs to, are summarily settled by referring to the will. There are dis- putes and disagreements among distant relations towards near ones, about they would have got this, that, and the other thing, if there injurious had been a will. They say they ought to have got it, and have as results from good a right to it, as it was always intended and promised, or half making promised or hinted at by their deceased friend that they were to 1 s* get it. It is also a cause of unseemly disputes and unholy estrange- ments, hatred, and dislike between brothers and sisters, and their mother, the want of a Will, as they suppose their older brother or others have received more than they ought to have got, and that they have got less than their right, or what they should have got; some perhaps from having been a principal help and means of making the money, others from the care they took of it, and of the person of the deceased, and from their being constantly with their parents, while the others were away or looking after their own inte- rest or affairs. It often happens, from this want of a testament, that brothers and sisters, whom their neighbours and every one con- sidered to be so affectionate and fond of one another, and who were brought up all their lives together, that it was thought nothing could part or estrange them from one another, have yet, from the want of will, and the distribution of their father and mother's pro- perty according to law, become the most bitter enemies of one another, and have remained estranged from one another for the rest of their lives ; and even the children of these have passed, and pass, and look at each other as strangers, and in many cases they do not know one another. This state of feeling as frequently hap- pens where there is a will, and where its contents are divided with too much partiality. By not making a will, many npar and dear relations who have and had a right to expect something to assist or make them more comfortable, have, by the want of a will, been be- reft of this hope which their relation always intended for them in his lifetime, when he used to support them, and, from doing so, they had a right to expect it; but, from some cause or other, a will was never made, and they were left in poverty or beggary.