Intestacy Reforms - The Way Things Were, 1952

Proposals to reform succession law can arouse strong feelings: the new code of intestate succession introduced as part of the 1925 property legislation I was seen by some2 as threatening the traditional landed estates; whilst the proposals in the Law Commission's recent Report Distribution on Intestacy.3 denounced as "naive and simplistic" by the authors of the standard practitioners' work4 and criticised in somewhat more measured terms by other commentators,5 have been rejected by the Government. 6 In contrast, the Intestates' Estates Act 1952 which effected a major shift in the policy of the law was enacted with little opposition, notwithstanding the fact that some of the issues which have now come to seem intractable had already become the subject of comment. 7 There may therefore be more than mere antiquarian interest in giving an account, drawing on the official papers which are now available in the Public Record Office, of how that Act came to be enacted. 8