Western Australian Consolidated Acts Western Australian Consolidated ActsWhereas by an Act passed in the first year of the reign of his late Majesty
King William the Fourth, intituled ‘ An Act for consolidating and
amending the Laws for facilitating the Payment of Debts out of Real Estate
,’ 4 it was (amongst other things) enacted that where any suit had been
or should be instituted in any court of equity for the payment of any debts of
any person or persons deceased to which their heir or heirs, devisee or
devisees might be subject or liable, and such court of equity should decree
the estates liable to such debts or any of them to be sold for satisfaction of
such debt or debts, and by reason of the infancy of any such heir or heirs,
devisee or devisees an immediate conveyance thereof could not, as the law then
stood, be compelled, in every such case such court should direct, and if
necessary compel, such infant or infants to convey such estates so to be sold
(by all proper assurances in the law) to the purchaser or purchasers thereof,
and in such manner as the said court should think proper and direct, and every
such infant should make such conveyance accordingly, and every such conveyance
should be as valid and effectual to all intents and purposes as if such person
or persons being an infant or infants was or were at the time of executing the
same of the full age of twenty-one years; and it was also thereby further
enacted, that where any lands, tenements, or hereditaments had been or should
be devised in settlement by any person or persons whose estate under the said
Act now in recital or by law, or by his or their will or wills, should be
liable to the payment of any of his or their debts, and by such devise should
be vested in any person or persons for life or other limited interest, with
any remainder, limitation, or gift over which might not be vested, or might be
vested in some person or persons from whom a conveyance or other assurance of
the same could not be obtained, or by way of executory devise, and a decree
should be made for the sale thereof for the payment of such debts or any of
them, it should be lawful for the court by whom such decree should be made to
direct any such tenant for life or other person having a limited interest, or
the first executory devisee thereof, to convey, release, assign, surrender, or
otherwise assure the fee simple or other the whole interest or interests so to
be sold to the purchaser or purchasers, or in such manner as the said court
should think proper; and every such conveyance, release, surrender,
assignment, or other assurance should be as effectual as if the person who
should make and execute the same were seised or possessed of the fee simple or
other whole estate so to be sold;
And whereas doubts are entertained whether the hereinbefore recited provisions
of the said Act extend to authorise courts of equity to direct mortgages as
well as sales to be made of the estates of such infant heirs or devisees, or
of lands, tenements, or hereditaments so devised in settlement as aforesaid,
and also to authorise such sales and mortgages to be made in cases where such
tenant for life or other person having a limited interest, or such first
executory devisee as aforesaid, is an infant; and it is expedient that the
said provisions of the said Act should be so extended, and that further
provision should be made in relation thereto in manner hereinafter mentioned:
Be it therefore enacted by the Queen’s most excellent Majesty, by and
with the advice and consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons,
in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same,