Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION. reported by ALEXANDER TAIT, CLERK OF SESSION, one of the reporters for the faculty.
Subject_2 FISHING.

Pringle of Crichton
v.
Pringles

Date: 28 February 1765

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A faculty to burden at any time during life, may be exerced on death-bed. The later cases to this purpose are 16th January 1740, M'Kean against Russell, observed by Clerk Home; and 11 New Coll., Buchanan against Buchanan, August 1758; also 1 New Coll., 12th February 1755, Lady Forbes and her Daughters against Lord Forbes; and still later, 28th February 1765, in the case of Pringle of Crichton, reversed on an appeal. Mark Pringle, anno 1748, disponed the estate of Crichton to his eldest son John, reserving his own liferent, a power to alter at any time in his lifetime, with the burden of all his debts, gifts, &c. owing at the time of his decease. On this disposition, charter and infeftment were expede. In the year 1758 Mark Pringle executed a new disposition also in favour of John, but with a small variation in the substitution. After all this, he exerced the faculty of burdening,—partly by a codicil to his will, which he executed in liege poustie, partly by an heritable bond which he executed on deathbed. After Mark's death, John brought a reduction of these, of the codicil, as a deed of a testamentary nature, and were therefore to be held as done on death-bed—of the bond, as actually done on deathbed. Further, he denied that he had accepted of the disposition and infeftment 1748; and, as the same was revoked by the settlement 1758, which also he never had accepted of, therefore he, being alioqui successurus, was entitled to take the estate as heir of the former investitures, and could not be precluded, by the settlements 1748 or 1758, or faculties therein contained, from challenging the deathbed deeds. The Lords (28th February 1765,) sustained the reasons of reduction, both of the heritable bond and codicil. But this decree, on an appeal to the House of Lords, was reversed, (January 1767.)

See the above, 4 New Coll., p. 207.