Delaware General Assembly

CHAPTER 268.

OF WILLS.

AN ACT making the mutilating or destroying of Wills or the withholding of them a misdemeanor.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Delaware in General Assembly met:

Section 1. That if any person or persons shall willfully add to, alter, deface, erase, obliterate, mutilate, blot, blur, steal, hide, conceal, destroy or misplace, with intent to conceal any instrument of writing purporting to be or in the nature of a last will and testament and intended to take effect upon the death of the testator, whether the said person or persons shall have been given custody or possession thereof by the testator, or shall have obtained custody or possession of said purported last will and testament in any other manner whatsoever, said person or persons shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by fine or imprisonment or both at the discretion of the Court.

Section 2. That it shall be the duty of any person or persons having the custody or possession of any instrument of writing purporting to be a last will and testament and intended to take effect upon the death of the testator therein named to produce and deliver the same to the Register of Wills for the County in which he resides within ten days from the time he receives information of the death of the said testator, and any person or persons willfully failing to deliver said instrument of writing to said Register of Wills as aforesaid, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by fine or imprisonment or both at the discretion of the Court.

Section 3. The Register of Wills for any county in this State at his own instance or at the instance or request of any person interested in any instrument of writing purporting to be the last will and testament of any person deceased, or at the instance or request of any person interested in the estate of any deceased person, whose last will and testament or instrument in the nature thereof has not been delivered to the Register of Wills of the County in which said will is, by the person or persons having the custody or possession thereof within ten days from the death of the testator, may issue a citation requiring the person or persons having custody or possession of said instrument to produce and deposit the same in his office for probate, and if such person or persons shall willfully withhold said instrument of writing for the space of ten days after being personally served with a citation to produce the same, such person or persons shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be punished by fine or imprisonment or both at the discretion of the Court.

Approved March 12, A. D. 1913.