Worth Richard: Wills Bill — Second Reading 
Worth Richard: Wills Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:9002] 
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) 
: 
 As the distinguished speaker before me Chris Auchinvole indicated National does support the Wills Bill which is a re-enactment of some very old law. If one were to reflect on what are probably the two most arcane areas of legal interest one would conclude they would be our rules relating to property and our rules relating to wills and estates. 
I would like to speak from the outset about the distinguishing feature of a will which is carried forward into this legislation. I would describe that distinguishing feature as being testamentary ambulatory and revocable because we all know that a will is a document that has no effect at all until the testator’s death. Until then it really remains just a mere declaration of intention and can be revoked or varied. So it is said to be ambulatory or changeable. The execution of a will still leaves the testator free to dispose of his or her property inter vivos and I will look at that inter vivos aspect in a moment. It is also the case that a will is capable of dealing with property acquired by the testator between the date of the will and the date of the death. So if a will executed in 1996 provides for a gift of “all my sports cars” that would include those sports cars owned by the testator at the time of the testator’s death in 1997 whether those cars were acquired before or after the date of the will. I will not talk about animus testandi but certainly that is an essential part of a testator’s capability to execute a will. 
Probably of greater significance is that we have seen significant legislative change that has intervened in and has denied to a significant extent the right that a testator had in the past of complete testamentary freedom. Prior to 2002 the two most important pieces of legislation were the Family Protection Act 1955 and the Law Reform (Testamentary Promises) Act 1949. The first was concerned with circumstances whereby a testator had failed to fill a moral obligation that he or she might have owed to third parties including primarily children and the Law Reform (Testamentary Promises) Act dealt with situations where promises that had been made by the testator had not been honoured. But what happened in February 2002 was that the Property (Relationships) Amendment Act 2001 was enacted; it renamed the Matrimonial Property Act 1976 extensively amended that legislation and made huge inroads in the context of matrimonial property and property in a partnership setting in the testamentary freedom that those persons would otherwise have had. 
The last item I want to deal with briefly is to note the difference that wills have as distinguished from other transactions. I am particularly thinking of inter vivos transactions because a will may be distinguished from an inter vivos transaction by two features. An inter vivos gift takes effect immediately and a will of course takes effect only upon death. Another distinguishing mark in looking at wills and other transactions is the important class of gift called donatio mortis causa. All these matters are carefully covered in the Wills Bill and I do not doubt that the work the Justice and Electoral Committee has done in reporting this bill back to Parliament has been done carefully and well.