Orders of the Day — MARRIED WOMEN (RESTRAINT UPON ANTICIPATION) BILL [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 29 November 1949.

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Photo of Mr Hartley Shawcross Mr Hartley Shawcross , St Helens 12:00, 29 November 1949

I know what the hon. Member is going to say, that this protective trust he contemplates in his proposed new Clause would assist in some way, but I am dealing with the basic idea of the two things and say that testators or settlors would rarely have chosen a protective trust if the matter had been open to them at that time, as indeed it was. The object of the proposed restraint was to protect the wife "from the kicks and kisses" of the husband, as it was put in the old cases, at a time when those were more usual than today. But I made the point on Second Reading and make it most emphatically again on the very best advice I can obtain on the matter, that it was not then regarded and never accepted by the Chancery courts simply as a device against creditors to protect a woman against parties who might be her creditors, or her husband's creditors.