The Will Where Everything Went Wrong

In Vucicevic v Aleksic, giving a succinct forty-nine paragraph judgment, HHJ Matthews addresses a handwritten will with a range of problems of interpretation, including the obliteration of a legacy and subsequent amendment, as well as issues of validity, capacity and conflicts of law.

Background

Mr Veljko Aleksic was born in Montenegro in the 1920s and moved to England shortly after the Second World War. When he died in 2014, aged 91, he left an estate of around £2.75million, having made a number of successful property and financial investments. He was survived by two siblings and a number of nieces and nephews, all of whom lived in Serbia and Montenegro.

Veljko had made his own will in 2012. After his death it became clear that there were a number of problems. This was not helped by the fact that, as the Judge noted of the will, 'the grammar is faulty, words are often misspelt and punctuation misplaced', although he hastened to add that 'bad English can still