The Temple.
MY DEAR DOROTHY,--Accept my heartiest congratulations on your
engagement to Gerald Anstruther. He is a good fellow, and I feel sure
that you will be very happy together. Your engagement is not one that
has been hurriedly rushed into. You have known each other for some time
and have had an opportunity of discovering each other's merits and
demerits, if any of the latter exist.
I am glad to hear that the wedding is to be an event of the immediate
future, and I have no doubt that Gerald is quite of my way of thinking.
I am patriotic enough to be pleased that you are going to marry
an Englishman. Not that I have any particular prejudice against
foreigners; but their marriage laws differ from ours and thereby lead
to complications.
For instance, a Frenchman, no matter what his age, cannot legally marry
without the consent of his parents, a fact which it is just as well for
English girls to remember.
Now I know that you will not be offended with me when I tell you that
your _fiancé_, although a man of business, is not a business man.
This may sound contradictory, but is not really so. There are many
men who follow regular occupations and attend to their own particular
business and yet are not, strictly speaking, men of business habits
and instincts. Literary men, musicians, artists, and inventors may
be generally regarded as instances in point. And Gerald, who is an
engineer and inventor, is not one of the exceptions to the rule, which
is my reason for offering you the following suggestions.
In the first place I would strongly advise you to persuade Gerald to
insure his life in some respectable English office; the American ones
are risky.
It is true that he is making a good income, but he has very little
money put by for a rainy day, for both of which reasons I would suggest
that he takes out a policy for £1,000 with profits. The premium for
insuring without profits would be a little less, but I am certain that
it is better on the whole to insure with profits.
The policy he can assign to you or leave you in his will, or, if he
waits till you are married, he can, if he likes, effect what is called
a trust policy for your benefit, and, so long as any object of the
trust remains unperformed, the policy will not form part of his estate
or become subject to his debts. The last few words of the foregoing
sentence you will be able to understand. You need not trouble your head
about the meaning of "trust" and "performance"; it is sufficient for
you to know that the arrangement is intended to benefit married ladies,
and can be carried out under the provisions of the Married Women's
Property Act.
All the above I am aware sounds dreadfully technical; but it is
extremely difficult when writing on legal matters to avoid legal
phraseology, the danger being that the omission of a single word in a
sentence may have the effect of giving a totally wrong interpretation
of the law.
The Act which I have mentioned above also gives you the right to retain
sole control of the money left you by your god-mother. It was not a
very large amount--£50, if I remember rightly. I should advise you to
deposit it in the Post Office Savings Bank if you have not already
done so. You will receive two and a half per cent. annual interest for
it, which is rather more than double what any ordinary bank would offer
you.
There is only one thing more that I wanted to mention, and I have
left it to the last because it is perhaps the most important thing of
all--it is on the subject of wills. It is not generally known that
every will is revoked by marriage.
You cannot make a will, my dear Dorothy, because you are not yet
twenty-one years of age; but Gerald can, and I consider that it is his
duty, and the duty of every man who gets married, to make his will, no
matter however small the amount of the property he has to dispose of
may be.
There is no great difficulty about making an ordinary will. All that
is necessary is that the intentions of the maker should be clearly
expressed, that he should sign it in the presence of two witnesses, who
should also affix their signature, and that is all.
There is only one other thing to remember, and that is that the
witnesses should not be people who benefit by the will, or rather, I
should say, who are intended to benefit by it, for the result of such
witnesses being left a legacy would be that, although the rest of the
will would hold good, they would not get their legacies. Also it is
important for anyone making a will to give the name of one willing to
act as executor.
I need hardly say that, when any difficulty arises in the making of a
will, it is advisable to consult a solicitor or a barrister such as
Your affectionate cousin,
BOB BRIEFLESS.
CHRONICLES OF AN ANGLO-CALIFORNIAN RANCH.
BY MARGARET INNES.