Subject_1 PROVISION to HEIRS and CHILDREN. Subject_2 SECT. XI.
Obligation to provide the conquest to the issue of a marriage. Import of this obligation with regard to the father.
Fraser v. Fraser
Date: 13 February 1677 Case No. No 80.
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A provision of conquest in a contract of marriage to the heirs, or to the bairns of the marriage, is not so strictly to be interpreted as if the father were under a specific obligation to make every subject effectual to them that he should happen to acquire during the marriage. It has no other effect than to be a limitation upon the father, that he cannot alter the destination established in their favour by substituting strangers. But as conquest is nomen universitatis, to no particular of which can the children lay claim, but to the universitas in general, the father, who may forbear to purchase, is at liberty to exercise every act of property after he does purchase; which, though it may alter or lessen the particular subjects that fall under the universitas, is not disposing of the universitas itself, or altering the destination established in the contract. Any mere gratuitous deed, however, without rational cause or consideration, will be understood to be an indirect method of altering the succession, et fraus facta contractui, and therefore ineffectual.
