PART II.
The Temple.
My dear Dorothy,—Accept my heartiest congratulations on your engagement to Gerald Anstruther. He is a good fellow, and I feel sure that you will be very happy together. Your engagement is not one that has been hurriedly rushed into. You have known each other for some time and have had an opportunity of discovering each other's merits and demerits, if any of the latter exist.
I am glad to hear that the wedding is to be an event of the immediate future, and I have no doubt that Gerald is quite of my way of thinking.
I am patriotic enough to be pleased that you are going to marry an Englishman. Not that I have any particular prejudice against foreigners; but their marriage laws differ from ours and thereby lead to complications.
For instance, a Frenchman, no matter what his age, cannot legally marry without the consent of his parents, a fact which it is just as well for English girls to remember.
Now I know that you will not be offended with me when I tell you that your fiancé, although a man of business, is not a business man.
This may sound contradictory, but is not really so. There are many men who follow regular occupations and attend to their own particular business and yet are not, strictly speaking, men of business habits and instincts. Literary men, musicians, artists, and inventors may be generally regarded as instances in point. And Gerald, who is an engineer and inventor, is not one of the exceptions to the rule, which is my reason for offering you the following suggestions.
In the first place I would strongly advise you to persuade Gerald to insure his life in some respectable English office; the American ones are risky.
It is true that he is making a good income, but he has very little money put by for a rainy day, for both of which reasons I would suggest that he takes out a policy for £1,000 with profits. The premium for insuring without profits would be a little less, but I am certain that it is better on the whole to insure with profits.
The policy he can assign to you or leave you in his will, or, if he waits till you are married, he can, if he likes, effect what is called a trust policy for your benefit, and, so long as any object of the trust remains unperformed, the policy will not form part of his estate or become subject to his debts. The last few words of the foregoing sentence you will be able to understand. You need not trouble your head about the meaning of "trust" and "performance"; it is sufficient for you to know that the arrangement is intended to benefit married ladies, and can be carried out under the provisions of the Married Women's Property Act.
All the above I am aware sounds dreadfully technical; but it is extremely difficult when writing on legal matters to avoid legal phraseology, the danger being that the omission of a single word in a sentence may have the effect of giving a totally wrong interpretation of the law.
The Act which I have mentioned above also gives you the right to retain sole control of the money left you by your god-mother. It was not a very large amount—£50, if I remember rightly. I should advise you to deposit it in the Post Office Savings Bank if you have not already done so. You will receive two and a half per cent. annual interest for it, which is rather more than double what any ordinary bank would offer you.
There is only one thing more that I wanted to mention, and I have left it to the last because it is perhaps the most important thing of all—it is on the subject of wills. It is not generally known that every will is revoked by marriage.
You cannot make a will, my dear Dorothy, because you are not yet twenty-one years of age; but Gerald can, and I consider that it is his duty, and the duty of every man who gets married, to make his will, no matter however small the amount of the property he has to dispose of may be.
There is no great difficulty about making an ordinary will. All that is necessary is that the intentions of the maker should be clearly expressed, that he should sign it in the presence of two witnesses, who should also affix their signature, and that is all.
There is only one other thing to remember, and that is that the witnesses should not be people who benefit by the will, or rather, I should say, who are intended to benefit by it, for the result of such witnesses being left a legacy would be that, although the rest of the will would hold good, they would not get their legacies. Also it is important for anyone making a will to give the name of one willing to act as executor.
I need hardly say that, when any difficulty arises in the making of a will, it is advisable to consult a solicitor or a barrister such as
Your affectionate cousin,
Bob Briefless.
[CHRONICLES OF AN ANGLO-CALIFORNIAN RANCH.]
By MARGARET INNES.