AN IMPROVED MEANS TO BE EMPLOYED IN CONDUCTING UNDERTAKINGS OF THE CLASS CALLED TONTINES.
Year: 1879

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by James Gray Lawrie and David
George Hoey at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents on the 18th April
1879.
JAMES GRAY LAWRIE, of Kelvinside, Shipbuilder, and DAVID GEORGE HOEY, of
Glasgow, Public Accountant, both in the County of Lanark, North Britain. AN
IMPROVED MEANS TO BE EMPLOYED IN CONDUCTING UNDERTAKINGS OF THE CLASS
CALLED TONTINES.'
"8
<
$ 3
Tontines" are associations, or institutions, or partnerships in which money is
raised or property held by a body of shareholders, under the condition that the
shares which belong to the individual partners are held upon a tenure by which
they are respectively terminable on the occurrence of certain events, the whole
money or property ultimately falling to one or more of the partners.
In working these undertakings it has been the practice for each shareholder
to name a life upon which the continued existence of his share is to depend, or
a separate life for each share, where he holds more than one, and on the death of
the person so named, the interest held under that share lapses and the money or
property represented by the share falls to the holders of the remaining shares.
The value of such remaining shares thus goes on to increase as shares continue
to lapse on the deaths of nominees, until the money or property falls in to the
partner whose nominee last survives, or is divided amongst a limited number of
shareholders as may be provided in any particular "Tontine."
In a "Tontine" with a large number of shareholders or where they reside in
various localities, difficulties will arise in carrying out the arrangements connected
with separate nominees for each share.
This Invention provides means for overcoming these difficulties, and essentially
consists in a special arrangement of share certificate so contrived that each
certificate has a number, letter, or letters of the alphabet, or other special denoter
attached to or forming part of the certificate dividing the shares into groups, each
group having a fixed correlation to a corresponding group of lives enumerated in a
relative list or table; or the said number, or letter, or other special denoter may be
on a separate instrument or token corresponding with the share certificate, and each
group of shares is to lapse upon the occurrence of any death in the corresponding
group of the relative list or table, and the money or property represented by such
shares is to fall to the remaining partners.

page_text: "
For example, the lives of persons who may be members of any assembly or
corporation may be chosen to determine the continued existence of the respective
shares, which lives so selected are to be individually stated in groups in a list or
table relative to the particular "Tontine in connection with which they are
chosen. Upon the first death which occurs amongst the persons included in any
group in such list or table, all shares in the corresponding group shall lapse, and
the money or property represented by such shares shall devolve upon the holders
of the remaining shares, and so on successively on the occurrence of the deaths
of other persons included in any other group in such list or table until one group
only is left standing.
Each share certificate may have a second number, letter, or special denoter
attached to or forming part thereof, or on a separate instrument or taken corre-
sponding therewith, or a third, or a fourth, up to any number to be made use of in
the manner above described in succession, on the occurrence of successive deaths of
persons included in the relative list or table.