WE often receive telephone calls from disgruntled beneficiaries who wish to challenge a will.
Often, these cases go nowhere. Sometimes, however, there is a genuine cause for concern. The recent press coverage of the young widow who faked her late husband’s wills is a prime example of this: Marsha Henderson married Newton Davies in 2004 when he was 76 and she was in her twenties. Mr Davies died in 2013, leaving a legacy of £25,000 to his young wife with the remainder of his £600,000 estate passing to his only daughter and a close friend. Ms Henderson subsequently claimed that she had found a more recent will hidden inside a discarded bag of Dorito crisps in the attic of Mr Davies’ house under the terms of which she inherited £550,000.
Ms Henderson challenged the original will. Her claim was dismissed by Judge Nigel Gerald, who declared the later will to be invalid. He found it to be a ‘poor’ forgery; the most obvious error to be that the document referred to it being ‘her’ last will rather than ‘his’ and in circumstances whereby the deceased was a man this was not an inconsequential defect. Judge Nigel Gerard was quite scathing in his comments to Ms Henderson describing her story as ‘ridiculous’. He commented on the absence of an explanation as to how, when and why Mr Davies who was in his 80s and who didn’t eat Doritos could have gone into the loft to hide the will and why he would have done so in an empty crisp packet.
A forged or fraudulent will is just one of the grounds for contesting a will. A will can be forged in its entirety or it could simply be that the signature of the person making the will which has been forged. In Ms Henderson’s case, the court found that she had forged the entire will.
When a will is successfully challenged on the grounds of forgery or fraud, it will be declared invalid and then the estate is distributed in accordance with a previous valid will or, if there isn’t a will, then the estate will be distributed pursuant to the Intestacy Rules.
Challenging a will solely on the basis of a fraud is not easy not least because the deceased is likely to be the only first-hand witness and obviously they are unable to provide any evidence. This means that in some cases, challenges to a will might be better brought on the basis that for example the deceased did not have the requisite knowledge and approval of the contents of the will when they signed it.
If there is a concern that a will might be forged, it is important to consider whether any of the following may be applicable: the deceased has left someone out of the will that you would expect to be included, such as a spouse or child, without an obvious reason for doing so; there is a large bequest to whoever drafted the will; the will has been executed by a person whose death is imminent; the will benefits one person to the exclusion of others; the will primarily benefits non-relatives or where multiple wills have been executed leading up to the death of the testator.
If any of these ring a bell, it might be time to consider taking further specialist advice.
For more information, contact Borneo Martell Turner Coulston on 01604 622101 or visit the website www.bmtclaw.co.uk
