SIR,—I read with interest Miss Macmillan's letter on this subject
in your issue of the 4th instant As I entered the Law sixty-one years ago I have had ample opportunities of witnessing the gradual changes which have taken place during that period in the status of married women. Legislation on the lines recommended by Lord Hanworth's Committee is long overdue, but I agree with Miss Macmillan that the Restraint on Anticipation should be at once entirely abolished and that it is anomalous that one section of married women should be free from the Restraint while another section remains subject to it. Such a situation would certainly place creditors in an embarrassing position.
I recall a case in which I was professionally concerned many years, ago where a married lady, living apart from her husband, with a settled. income of £6,000 a year " restrained from anticipation," under an English Settlement with English trustees incurred debts -in England in respect of some of which her unfOrtimate husband was-sued by the creditors and proceeded against in bankruptcy. The lady resided in the south of France and her trustees remitted her income direct to her_ there, but her creditors were helpless because in the then, state of the, law (and indeed as it actually exists at the present time) no personal judgement could be obtained against her, her income could_ not be attached, she was immune from bankruptcy, and could not be committed to prison for
debt. It is surely imperative that such a state of affairs should be remedied without delay.
In conversation with an eminent Conveyancing Counsel some thirty years ago he urged that the time was even then ripe for a change in the law, and he jocularly suggested that all that was really needed was a very short Act of Parliament declaring that " As from the date hereof every woman shall be a man."—Yours, &c.,
AN OLD FAMILY SOLICITOR.
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