The only son and heir-apparent of a baronet and heir of entail, an officer in the army, and dependent on his father except for his pay, had for some years lived beyond his allowance, and had more than once to apply to his father to pay his debts. His father did so. The son again fell into debt, and consulted the family agent, his most pressing liability being a bill for pounds 3000 granted to a money-lender, on which he feared he might be made bankrupt, and so ruined in his profession. The son, if he survived his father, became absolutely entitled to the fee of the estates, which were worth upwards of pounds 300,000. After much correspondence and consultation, it was arranged that the estates should be disentailed and conveyed to trustees to hold for the father in liferent, and the son in liferent alimentary allenarly, and for the heirs of the son’s body, whom failing the heir to the baronetcy in fee. As part of the arrangement the son’s debts were to be paid, and an increased allowance secured to him by charges on the estates. The son about three years afterwards raised an action against the trustees and his father for reduction of the deeds by which the arrangement had been carried out, on the ground that his father and the family agent, in pursuance of a joint scheme which they had laid some years before, to deprive the pursuer of the fee of the estates, induced him to enter into the arrangement by false and fraudulent representation and fraudulent concealment, and that the pursuer had consented to the arrangement (1) under essential error, (2) under essential error induced by the father and his law-agent, and (3) under essential error fraudulently so induced.
The House- rev. the decision of the Second Division, and restoring the interlocutor of the Lord Ordinary (Low)-while negativing all idea of fraud, set aside the family arrangement, on the ground that the son had been induced to enter into it by representations made by the agent as to a matter of fact, viz., the possibility of raising the necessary funds in some other way, he having no legal advisers, and being ignorant of his own rights and powers.
Judges:
Lord Chancellor (Herschell), and Lords Watson, Ashbourne, Field, and Hannen
Citations:
[1893] UKHL 530, 30 SLR 530
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Trusts, Legal Professions
Updated: 30 March 2022; Ref: scu.633296