Rawdon Crozier reflects on mixed messages & disclaimer by conduct
- Conflicting lines of authority about what is required for a disclaimer to become irrevocable & therefore effective.
- What is the requisite intention for disclaimer?
The story of the “dog in a manger”, is, like almost every other fable, generally credited to Aesop and, like almost every other fable, has a plot of the utmost simplicity: a dog climbs into a mangerful of hay and guards it fiercely against the cows, goats, horses and any other animal that might benefit from eating its contents. When a horse, reasonably, points out that the dog only eats meat and asks why the dog is guarding the hay so vigorously, the dog replies: “So no-one else can eat it.”
Sometimes a beneficiary under a will or on an intestacy can behave like the dog of the fable—the “Fable of the vindictive beneficiary” might run as follows:
- An unhappy family consisted of a mother, two children and a husband, step-father to the children, whom he did not like. In the end all of them become estranged from one another.
