| Ranking of Orr of Watterston's Creditors |
1777
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Ranking of Creditors, Conjunct and Confident Persons, Onerous Creditor |
This case concerns a competition over the ranking of the creditors of Robert Orr of Waterstone, whose affairs went into disorder in 1767. One year after a horning was denounced against him, he gave a principal settlement in favor of his wife and children, Isobel Rowan and Janet and Elizabeth Orrs. When Rowan and her daughters entered this interest into the ranking, objections were made on the grounds that a settlement made by a bankrupt person in favor of conjunct and confident persons, with no onerous cause, could not compete with the rights of creditors. Lord Kennet, Ordinary, sustained these objections in July of 1776. The following March, Rowan and the Orr children petitioned the Court to review this interlocutor. They argued that Orr's settlement in favor of his family was indeed onerous on their account, as a replacement for the fact that Orr and his wife had no marriage contract. Furthermore, they argued that the settlement was also onerous due to the fact that it had been granted in return for the £400 sterling in dowery money that Rowan's brother had given Orr. As a final point, they added that although the period of time that had elapsed since Lord Kennet's interlocutor had rendered his decision final, they asked for special dispensation: their former agent, William Wilson of Soonhope, had died around the time objections were being made to their interest, and their next prospective agent, James Sommers, declined on account of a conflict of interest. "Indeed it is only within these two days that the petitioners, by the assistance of friends, have been able to afford the expense of printing this petition to your Lordships." |
