Page 4108 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 22 October 1991
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I will address my comments now to these three Bills - the Wills (Amendment) Bill, the Forfeiture Bill and the Administration and Probate (Amendment) Bill. I will be brief in relation to those. I appreciated Mr Collaery's quite humorous stories in relation to some of the things people put in wills. I could probably tell a few stories along similar lines, but I will not.
These Bills are sensible pieces of legislation which emanate from Justice Kelly's committee. That committee has provided a very good service, I think, to the ACT in the time it has been operating. The Wills (Amendment) Bill, especially, simplifies the process of interpretation of wills. It has some good provisions in relation to the way courts will, by statute, interpret wills so that the testator's intention is given full effect.
Indeed, various extraneous items can, in fact, as a result of these amendments, be used to help interpret wills. Those are very sensible amendments which will assist even further in giving effect to the testator's real intention, which is basically what will making is all about.
I am glad to say that our court here now has streamlined its procedures in relation to administering probate and looking at wills. Some 20 or 30 years ago it was very strict in terms of what words you actually had to have in a will. If anything was missing, if any technical point was missing, the will might be invalid. Then the beneficiaries and the executors would be forced to go through testators family maintenance, which was an artificial way used where people died intestate. It has been simplified over the years, certainly since the end of the war.
In the ACT these further amendments make it that much simpler. That is obviously for the good of all, because it was needlessly complex in the past. I certainly commend these Bills to the Assembly, and the Liberal Party naturally supports them.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (10.36), in reply: I am very pleased to hear general support in the Assembly for these reforms. I will not try to top Mr Collaery's extremely amusing and erudite remarks about the history of will making, and the sometimes bizarre consequences that can occur when simple typographical errors that solicitors or testators make conspire to thwart clear intentions.
The reforms that are proposed in these three Bills are, to some extent, technical black-letter law reforms of interest only to lawyers. I do not know whether they are necessarily exciting. I noticed that the faces of some lawyers present in the chamber were not exactly showing great excitement during the debate. They are, nonetheless, significant; in particular, I think, the forfeiture rule.
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