Forged Wills & Recent Judgements

As can be seen from the cases below when a Will is challenged as a forgery there can often be an intriguing back story, which makes for good reading.

Re Brunt (Deceased) [2020] EWHC 1784 (Chn)

Case background

The first case of Re Brunt (Deceased) [2020] EWHC 1784 (Chn) involves an office cat. The deceased died intestate aged 35 in 2007 and the estate was administered as per the intestacy rules. Almost a decade later the office cat knocked over a pile of papers to discover a Will of the deceased from 1999, signed by the deceased’s attorney.

In this case, at first instance, the 1999 Will was held to be valid even though the attorney had a previous conviction of fraud and expert evidence had concluded the Will had been signed much later than 1999. The judge adopted an approach where the disputed evidence provided by the attorney was used as the platform to assess the consistency of the witness evidence and his findings. In his judgment, he stated the defendants were impressive witnesses, the claimant was unimpressive, and that he had taken into account the bad character of the attorney.

The claimants sought to appeal the decision where it was concluded the judge had made an error in his approach, had failed to weigh the evidence against factors that indicated the Will was a forgery, and had given insufficient weight to the expert handwriting evidence which strongly indicated the Will was not signed in 1999. The attorney’s evidence should have been viewed as unreliable documents as they were being challenged as forgeries and should not have been used as the platform. The focus should have been on the witnesses and their potential motives for lying. It was unclear as to why the defendants had been found to be impressive witnesses, the claimant had not, and what had been taken into account when considering the attorney’s bad character.

A re-trial has been ordered and the outcome is awaited.

Face v Cunningham [2020] EWHC 3119 (Ch)

Case background

The facts of the second case Face v Cunningham [2020] EWHC 3119 (Ch) read as if they could come from a Sherlock Holmes novel and the judge made a comment along these lines. Here a photocopy of the ‘missing’ Will was found under a bedspread on a bed in a spare room and the journal of the deceased was allegedly found tightly wrapped in a Tesco “Bag for Life” which had been left underneath a car. The evidence from two witnesses was rejected by the judge as pure fiction.

The claimant, sought to prove the ‘missing’ Will, which effectively disinherited her siblings with her inheriting the estate in its entirety. The Will even contained detailed reasons for the testator’s reasons for distribution of the estate. The defendants alleged that the ‘missing’ Will had been forged. The judge found that the claimant and the two witnesses were not credible witnesses and had conspired to forge the Will. The evidence from the handwriting expert’s handwriting was not conclusive.

Ball v Sisson [2020] 1 WLUK 544

Case background

The third case is Ball v Sisson [2020] 1 WLUK 544. Here the Will was held to have been forged by the daughter. In this case, there was CCTV footage evidence submitted by the claimant which discredited the daughter’s story of what had happened on the day the Will was allegedly executed. She had claimed that she had gone to the deceased’s house to collect her to take her to sign the Will, but the CCTV showed the deceased had not left the house at all on that day. In addition, there was a record of a call to the police by the daughter asking questions about the deceased’s Will and being advised to take her mother to a solicitor. A handwriting expert concluded that there was over a 50% chance that the signature was forged.

Comment

Whilst the above cases make interesting reading there is a point that witness evidence should not be underestimated and that expert evidence is not always conclusive.