Los Angeles herald., 1906-04-08
WhimS and FanCieS Revealed in Wills

A LTHOUGH bankers, lawyers and
~ others interested in the financial
and legal signs of the times have
already ceased discussing the will of
the late Marshall Field. it still has
wide general interest as an indication
of the passing of the individual trus-
tee as the person to carry out the pro-
visions of such a document. Mr.. Field
divided his vast estate into several be-
quests and placed them in the charge
of trust companies acting in co-opera-
ton with individual trustees. By so
doing he emphasized the truth of the
saying of a British jurist that the true
index of a mans character is contained
in his last will and testament" In this
case the document was an index of the
far-seeing business acumen of the tes-
tator who thus gave post mortem ap-
proVal to the system that is nowadays
rapidly replacing the old fashioned
truSteeship of individuals by the mod
ern trusteeship of organized institutions
acting in an impersonal business ca
pacity.
In fact it is becoming more and
more difficult to persuade the ordinary
we'll informed mortal to be a trustee
Men who act as trustees, however we'll
intended they may be, often get into
serious difficulties. Not long ago two
trustees in England, neither of them
wealthy man, were compelled by the
beneficiary under the will to pay back
to him out of their own pockets $50, 900
which had been lost through an invest
ment contrary to the terms of the
document but made in compliance with
the benefctary's own most ardent
wishes.
BY Companies Now
In legal phrase a trustee is a person
entrusted with property for the bene-
fit of another" In more homely lam
guage such a person is one who has all
the worries and responsibilities of
wealth without any of it's enjoyments
Then, too, there are men who betray
the trust respOSed i'm them and disSi-
pate property whose rightful owners
have no means of recovering it. For
these reasons the day of the individual
trustee is passing. The modern trust
company is taking his place. one New
ork company alone is trustee for
more than $l,OOO,OOO worth of estates
and private bequests.
Without some means to carry out it's
provisions there would be little use i'm
making will whether expressed in the
ordinary legal phraseology or in the
style adopted by the jovial spirit who
began,
y, William Hickington,
Poet of Pocklngton.
DO give and bequeath,
As free as / breathe"
and continued throughout in doggerel.
or like that 9f the gentleman with a
prejudice against mustaches who care
fully provided that none of his heirs
should ever be anything but smooth
shaven.
1t is a curious fact that some of the
crudest and quaintest wills ever stood |
legal tests while others drawn up by
skilled lawyers have been successfully
broken. One of the most remarkable
wills on record in England was scratch
ed on plank of wood by a shipwreck-
ed naval officer another WILL admitted
to probate in New York was written
on the back of the frontispiece in a
German story book. In Rhode Islandl
may be seen what is probably the short |
est will on record 1t contains only six |
words: Mrs. -, / leave her ALL" Yet
iT was quite as effective as the prolix-
lty and solemnity with which William
Shakespeare began a similar document.
I'm the name of God, Amen" wrote
the great dramatist. II, William