Legislative Reforms of Custom
Many rules of customary law have been amended or abolished by legislation in the later 19th and 20th centuries. Examples of this include:
- “Any rule of customary law, that a contract passed before the Royal Court for the transfer of immovable property may be annulled, at the instance of the heirs or devisees, as the case may be, of the transferor, if he or she dies within 40 days of the passing of the contract, is abolished” (Customary Law Amendment (No. 2) (Jersey) Law 1984).
- In customary law, the age of majority was 20 years; the Age of Majority (Jersey) Law 1999 reduces this to 18 years.
- “The rule under customary law that all gifts to a concubine are null is hereby abolished” (Wills and Successions (Jersey) Law 1993).
- Customary law did not permit a cause of action for/against a person to survive the person’s death against/for the benefit of the person’s estate; Customary Law Amendment (Jersey) Law 1948 reversed this situation.
- The année de jouissance (the right of an executor to have the income arising during the administration of a moveable estate for a year and a day) was abolished by the Wills and Successions (Jersey) Law 1993.
Read more about this topic: Law Of Jersey, Sources of Law, Customary Law
Famous quotes containing the words custom, legislative and/or reforms:
“The New Year is the season in which custom seems more particularly to authorize civil and harmless lies, under the name of compliments. People reciprocally profess wishes which they seldom form and concern which they seldom feel.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“One of the reforms to be carried out during the incoming administration is a change in our monetary and banking laws, so as to secure greater elasticity in the forms of currency available for trade and to prevent the limitations of law from operating to increase the embarrassment of a financial panic.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)