Subject_1 ALIMENT. Subject_2 Of the act 1491, cap. 25. anent alimenting of Heirs. Subject_3 Import of the Act:
It is ordained, that where any lands happen to fall in ward to the King, or any baron of the realm, spiritual or temporal, or lands given in conjunct fee or liferent, as well as to burgh as to land, that the sheriff of the shire or bailies shall take surety of the person or persons, that gets or has such wards, that they shall not waste or destroy their biggings, orchards, woods, stanks, parks, meadows, or dovecots, but that they hold them in such kind as they are in the time that they receive the same; they taking their reasonable sustentation, or using, in needful things, without destruction or wasting thereof. “And an reasonable living to be given to the sustentation of the air, after the quantitie of the heritage, gif the said air has na blanche ferme, nor feu ferme land, to susteine him on, alsweil of the ward lands, that fallis to our Soveraine Lordis hands, as onie uther barronne, spiritual or temporal.”
Scots Acts, v. 1. p. 158.
Sibbald v. Wallace
Date: 11 February 1636 Case No. No 9.
Aliment was, refused to an apparent heir, because the sums liferented by the relict of his brother were small, and not exceeding the interest of her tocher; and because he was 40 years old, and ought to have a trade.
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One Mr William Sibbald pursuing the relict of Mr Alexander Sibbald, who was his brother, to hear a reasonable modification decerned to be given to him, as heir to his deceased brother for his aliment, out of 400 merks yearly, whereof she was liferenter and conjuct-fiar with her husband; from the which pursuit the Lords assoilzied the defender, because it was neither founded upon law, equity, nor practice; seeing the relict had only infeftment of 400 merks of annualrent yearly, whereof 200 for the annualrent of 2000 merks given with her in tocher to her husband; and the other 200 merks was for the like sum, which her husband, by her contract of marriage, was obliged to furnish, effeirand to her tocher received by him; no part whereof the Lords found could be allotted to the pursuer, for his aliment, he being a person major, past the age of 40 years at least; and who either ought to have taken him to a calling, whereby to have lived, or else having an actual calling whereby he might live; and the act of Parliament, which is the ground of the like pursuits, is introduced in favours of persons being minors: Likeas this pursuer designed himself, in this summons, to be a preacher of the word of God; and therefore absolvitor was given.
