TAN TECK NEO Vs. GEORGE TAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The purpose of this appeal is to establish the rights of two classes of beneficiaries under the will and codicil of a Chinaman, Lee Choon Guan, who died at Singapore on 27 August 1924. One class consists of the appellant herself, the widow of the testator, and the defendant Lee Chim Tuan, a trustee of the will and codicil; the other is formed by four women whose names are given in cl. 4 of the codicil and to whom the testator directed his trustees to make certain monthly payments during their respective lives. All these beneficiaries may conveniently be referred to as "the annuitants."

(2.) By virtue of certain dispositions contained in the will and codicil which will be referred to in detail hereafter the testator's residuary estate fell to be finally divided among his grandchildren and remoter descendants at the expiration of 21 years from his death, namely, on 27 August 1945, At that date all the annuitants were still living. The construction of the will and codicil which has found favour with the learned Chief Justice in the High Court of the Colony of Singapore and on appeal with the learned Judges of the Court of Appeal of that Colony is to the effect that on that date the rights of each of the annuitants came to an end, and that as a consequence this event of the division of residue into capital shares left the testator's widow and the four other ladies, who were in fact his concubines, without any further right to look to his estate for the payment of the monthly sums which they had hitherto been receiving.

(3.) This construction does not commend itself to their Lordships as correct. It appears to them to involve a confusion between administrative provisions regulating how these annuities, when paid, were to be charged against the residuary estate, in which there were numerous and settled interests, and substantive provisions specifying the source of the annuities themselves. And it also appears to them to give inadequate weight to the fact that the annuities are expressly given for the respective lives of the annuitants. But it is impossible to discuss what is at issue in this question of construction and to explain why their Lordships feel constrained to differ from the views taken in the Courts below without briefly setting out the scope and con. tents of this will and codicil, so far as they are material.