Pollard on Some Oddities of the Law on Age: So You Thought You Reached 21 on Your 21st Birthday? @WilberforceCh

David Pollard, Wilberforce Chambers, has published Some Oddities of the Law on Age: So You Thought You Reached Age 21 on Your 21st Birthday? at 34 Trust Law International 21 (2020). Here is the abstract.

It can be very important to work out for legal purposes precisely how old someone is - what age have they reached? This paper looks at oddities in the law in England and Wales, contrasting the old common law position before the Family Law Reform Act 1969 took effect. This article looks at the history and some of the remaining nooks and crannies in this area, including:

 

● If a person is born on 29 February in a leap year, when is their birthday?

 

● What happens if a person is in a different time zone on his or her birthday? Do they reach the relevant age earlier (or later) than they would in the UK?

 

A story involving:

 

● a death in the first world war;

 

● theft of false teeth;

 

● a rear admiral serving his commutation notice a day before his birthday;

 

● The Pirates of Penzance;

 

● soldiers in Hong Kong; and

 

● a widow arguing that she had reached age 55 when her husband died (on the day before her birthday) because she was born early in the morning in the Philippines.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.