The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-08-19
FACTS ABOUT woMEN's WILLS.
Pecullarities Which Lawyer Says are
 Common

| Common.
 "I saw a statement somewhere the
 other day to the effect that the short
 est will ever recorded at the surro- gates office was made by a. woman" l said the old lawyer "This is probably the case, but it is the exceptional brevity that goes to prove the usual
 prolxity of the wills of women. "As rule, when I am summoned to record the testamentary directions of a ! woman so prepared for a long seize of writing and advising. To start with, woman has greater variety of belongings to bequeath than man, or, I If the chattels are not really more va
 ried, she, herself, establishes line of 1 distinction and divides them into more 1 classes. A man, when making his will,
 is given to generalizing. A woman, on the other hand, particularizes, and | where the masculine devisor will take | a set of objects or group of sets, for l that matter, and lump them all off to \ one legatee, she will scatter the same I things around among a score of friends or relations,
 "The strangest part of this writing | of feminine wills is that no matter how positive and concise of thought the l testatrix may be on ordinary occasions, | the minute she sets out to make prep
 arations for the post-mortem distribu-
 ton of her property she becomes un-
 certain of herself. The mainstays of
 her wealth, such as real estate and a
 bank account, she will probably be ] a t1a minor hannlGte
 cause her endless trouble and she is bound to take up each item separately
 and argue it's appropriateness as a l gift to this person and that and ex-
 plain with mlnuteness, what each, in
 turn, has done to merit remembrance I If all these considerations could be
 threshed over and settled privately, be-
 fore my interview begins, I wouldn't
 mind the tortuousness of the channels | through which she arrives at her con-
 clusions, but when the pros and cons
 are reserved for my own judgment and | am expected to decide upon each pro-
 vision the prospect certainly does not
 make a lawyer jingle with thrills of
 pure delight.
 Then, too, women are faddy about
 their wills Every little while some
 body with bump of statistics forages
 around through legal literature and
 brings to light number of testament
 tary curiosities, In all these resurrec- | tions it is found that the majority of
 freak bequests were devised by wo- men. Personally I have drawn up but | few of these outlanding wills where the
 money was hidden away under Robin | Hoods barn, or the legatee was to come into his own only be the accom- | plishment of some unreasonable, crazy | task imposed upon him, but my expe- rience has been sufficiently varied to | show me that women are fond of bi- zarre effects in the matter of bestowing | their riches.
 Another pecuiarty of womens wills | is the rarity and meagreness of their bequests to charitable enterprises This statement is, of course, made in broad sense. There have been some notable gifts to public institutions by wealthy women, but it is fact that when the average woman of means comes to die she loses sight Of the stranger at her gates and enriches those endeared to her by ties of blood and friendship to the exclusion of homes and reformatories that stand by waiting for a contribution. The cause of this apparent lack of generosity Is undoubtedly due to the fact that the charity of many woman is personal ly conducted and that all arrangements for providing for her benefciarfes have been completed privately and on a cashbasis prior to the writing of the will. But, however often this explana- tion may hold good, certain it is that when ten men and ten women equally endowed with the good things of the world come to attend to their ills, five of the men will bequeath some small sum to charity, while one of the wo- men will be inclined to a similar bene- faction.
 And this brings me to another fea- ture of women's wills. All things con- sidered I must confess that women are disposed to be unjust in their wills. 1 In the past twenty years I have drawn l up hundreds of wills whose terms were | so obviously unjust in certain particu- lars that I actually felt ashamed of | myself for writing them, which is a | pretty srong assertion, coming from | lawyer. This injusice is particularly | manifest in the case. of step children. | I have known many women who were good to their husbands children so far as physical care of them went, yet | when 1t came to handling the financial | affairs of the family the children were sure to suffer through the transaction.
 "There is one class of dependents, | however, upon which women who make wills lavish money ithout stint, and that is pet animals. There as a time when a will which contained clause authorizing the trustees to invest seve- ral thousand dollars for the support of a cat or dog was a matter for newspa- per comment, but nowadays unless the bequest Is excessive such terms are not considered worthy of mention. There are animals in this town that are liv- ing off the fat of the land in private homes and dogs boarding houses, and all their expenses, which are never light, are paid through the kindness of 3 mistress whose last thought was for them.
 But rnanifestly absurd and unjust though the wills of many women are, 1t S seldom that one of them is contested. The same document, dictated by a man, would probably be somehow the gene 'al opinion Is that it is better to take the will of woman at its face value md all concerned usually resign