Where There's A Will, There's A Way

The court has found that a dying woman had the necessary capacity and intention to make a deathbed revocation of her Will by tearing it in half.

Carry Keats (‘the deceased'), aged 92 at the time, had previously made a Will that left her estate to her cousins in varying shares. However, destroying her Will had the effect of leaving her estate intestate and, as a result, the entirety of it passed to her younger sister.

During her lifetime, the deceased had been quite close with her cousins but had a ‘love-hate relationship' with her sister that at times was acrimonious and fraught although they had reconciled and grown closer during the final years of the deceased's life.

In June 2021, the tables turned with the deceased having a serious falling out with her cousins following discussions around her moving into a nursing home. The deceased took steps to revoke her Will which named her cousins as executors and also beneficiaries of 50% of her estate.