Scottish Court of Session Decisions

The arguments in this case, which have occupied the attention of Vice-Chancellor Kindersley for several days, were brought to a conclusion on Tuesday. The matter came on on petition and cross petition, which have been filed for the purpose of obtaining the opinion of the Court as to who are the parties entitled to a fund of about £2500 which has been paid in, under the Trustee Relief Act, by the trustees of Mr John Wilson. It appeared that the testator being a domiciled Englishman, by his will, made in the English form, gave one moiety of the residue of his property to his great niece, Elizabeth Mary Hickson, and her children. Elizabeth Mary Hickson, being then under age, married George Buxton, and eloped with him, but being pursued was overtaken and brought back before the marriage was consummated, and George Buxton was tried and convicted for the abduction of the infant, and imprisoned for three years for that offence. Seven years elapsed, when George Buxton, being employed upon some business in Scotland, after he had been there for forty days, had an action of divorce, a vinculo matrimonii, brought against him in the Scotch Court of Session by Elizabeth Hickson or Buxton, and a decree was made in her favour by the then presiding judge (Lord Wood). She then married in Edinburgh in a church, according to the rites of the Established Church, John Shaw, who had been a member of Grey's Inn, but had become attached to the Scotch bar, and who had settled in Edinburgh, and remained in Scotland till his death in 1852, the marriage being solemnised in the month of June 1840. Under the will of Mr John Wilson, her uncle, the lady took a life interest in £2500, and by the terms of the will that sum was to go after her death to her children, but if there were no children, then to other parties. She died in 1863, and her three children claimed the fund, but the parties entitled in reversion, and who presented the cross petition, also claimed it on the ground that the Scotch divorce did not hold good in England, the subsequent marriage with Shaw was consequently invalid, and the children of the marriage therefore illegitimate, and as such did not take. The principal point raised was whether the collusion of Buxton invalidated the divorce. His Honour reserved his decision.