PRICE V. PRICE AND ANOTHER 58/1962

©1978 /55

W. M. Houston, Govt. Print. Melb.

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

_.... RICE. AND. ANOTHER.

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

Judgment delivered at-.S¥OMCY ene on... Wednesday,..21st. Febrnary..1962_

PRICE AND ANOTHER

ORDER,

Appeal dismissed with costs.

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JUDGMENT,

PRICE AND ANOTHER

DIXON C.J. MENZIE:

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PRICE _AND_ANO'

This is an appeal from a judgment of Myers J. granting probate of the will of their mother, Mrs. Lily Ada Price, deceased, to the respondents, two of her sons, despite the objection of the appellant, another son, that the deceased when she made the will on 8th July 1959 was not of sound mind, memory or understanding. Her estate consisted of two cottages, one at Sutherland valued at £3,600 and one at Kensington valued at £2,600.

The deceased died on 12th March 1960 aged eighty-nine years. She was an old lady who admittedly up to a year before her death had retained the possession of her faculties to such an extent that when in April 1959 she fell and broke her femur the surgeon who attended thought that she was only in her seventies. She was matriarchal, shrewd, sardonic and held definite opinions which she was ready enough to express. She knew what she wanted and liked her own way.

The family consisted of two daughters and four sons, all at least of middle age. Until the time of the accident she had lived in her cottage at Sutherland with the appellant, her son Leo, an unmarried man employed by the Electricity Commission who was in receipt of a sixty per cent pension on account of disability caused by malaria and neurosis suffered while serving with the R.A.A.F. In addition to paying board he, so he said, had over a period of twenty years expended something like £2,000 upon or in connection with the cottage and had given his mother a great deal of personal care

and attention.