FRAUDULENT DEATHBED DEEDS.
TO THE EDITOR OF TILE SPECTATOR.
14th July 1834.
Sin—Although fully sensible you can afford very little space to correspondents at the present moment, yet your old ft iend the Solitaire hopes to be indulged with a corner of the Spectator, in order to make an humble attempt to call the attention if the powerful and influential to as extensively mischievous a con- trivance as ever was practised to evade the payment of an equitable share of the public burdens, of which several instances have lately COIL.: to my knowledge. The practice to which I allude is that of persons, when supposed to be near death, making over personal property, by some deed of gift, or transfer, to the individuals they intend shall be their heirs; who, by this piece of trickery, evade the probate and legacy duties ; and on the decease taking place, give in, under a solemn oath, a statement of their relation's property as valued at some trifling sum, perhaps not even exceeding one hundred pounds, and thus appropriating as many thousands free of taxation as they account for hundreds. Even this horrible equivocation is not the whole of the evil consequent on such deceptions. for, however hopeless the state of health of any person may appear, yet there cannot he a certainty that death must inevitably ensue within any given tilde: it is therefore obvious, that instances of poverty and dependence may be ex- pected to occur by recoveries from apparently fatal indispositions, unless the scheme comprehends some documents of a counter description to compel resti- tution in the event of recovery. Whether that ever makes any part of the ma- chinery I know not; but if such a complication cannot, or at least does not exist, the people who hold deeds of gift may not always be ready to relinquish the power of a certain possession ; or their sudden death may happen ; and their administrators may think themselves obliged to claim the sums thus weakly given on a supposed deathbed, to trick Government of its taxes (what a preparation for eternity !)—or in some cases, perhaps creditors might found a claim, and it may sometimes happen that the recovered donor may rejoice even to find a shelter in a parish workhouse. Iu fact, the whole proceeding is awfully pro- fane, dangerous, and demoralizing. If the attention of Government were once seriously drawn towards the subject, a remedy for the mischief could easily be -found : for I think, that in order to stop such proceedings, it would only be necessary to declare that these deeds of gift and transfers of property must be re- garded on the same footing as testamentary bequests, the amount included in the probate, and subject to the legacy.duty ; and thus would end these frauds upon the public revenue under the profauatirra of a solemn oath.
A SOLITAIRE. A SOLITAIRE.
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