Unsigned Will

BooJewels

Alderbank said:

'All to Mother', duly signed and witnessed, would have done.

The court of probate ruled that this will, the shortest ever, by C Thome in 1905, was sufficient and valid.

The estate I'm managing just now, I found a copy of her husband's will, attached to its Grant of Probate from 2014 and that was hand written on one of the pre-printed decorative pre-printed DIY sheets you can buy from stationers and was 25 words, naming his wife as his executor and leaving 'everything I own' to her - signed and witnessed.  So it doesn't take much to actually be valid, even more recently.

Could the 'tenants in common' thing not have been satisfied from a land registry search and paying £1.50?

user1977

Bibi_Belle said:

Savvy_Sue said:

Forgive me if I'm being dense, but why did your brother need access to the house documents? Which house documents? The 'deeds' can be downloaded for a small fee, by anyone. 

Was he using a solicitor to draft his will?

Hi, he needed to know whether they were ‘tenants in common’. He also needed a deed of trust in which my parents put some money towards the house. Since he died we found a solicitor who managed to get the deeds and answer the question, it wasn’t clear from the deeds if they were tenants in common, but the solicitor explained it. He used his Union to draft the Will.

In other words, he was still deciding what to put in the Will. Which is why he hadn't signed it. I don't think this is going to go anywhere. In theory, if he had been keen to get the Will completed, he could even have put in wording which covered off either possibility.

I can't quote relevant case law off the type of my head, but I'm sure you'll find some cases around situations where testators were in the process of instructing solicitors to complete Wills.

Bibi_Belle

BooJewels said:

Alderbank said:

'All to Mother', duly signed and witnessed, would have done.

The court of probate ruled that this will, the shortest ever, by C Thome in 1905, was sufficient and valid.

The estate I'm managing just now, I found a copy of her husband's will, attached to its Grant of Probate from 2014 and that was hand written on one of the pre-printed decorative pre-printed DIY sheets you can buy from stationers and was 25 words, naming his wife as his executor and leaving 'everything I own' to her - signed and witnessed.  So it doesn't take much to actually be valid, even more recently.

Could the 'tenants in common' thing not have been satisfied from a land registry search and paying £1.50?

Yes in hindsight any Will is better than none. It’s not clear to me why he couldn’t get the deeds from the Land Registry. I’m sure he said he tried and couldn’t. We’ve since managed to do it and a solicitor explained them, although the info he needed from them wasn’t clear. They were tenants in common, the deeds didn’t directly say that but they were. 

Keep_pedalling

Bibi_Belle said:

Savvy_Sue said:

Forgive me if I'm being dense, but why did your brother need access to the house documents? Which house documents? The 'deeds' can be downloaded for a small fee, by anyone. 

Was he using a solicitor to draft his will?

Hi, he needed to know whether they were ‘tenants in common’. He also needed a deed of trust in which my parents put some money towards the house. Since he died we found a solicitor who managed to get the deeds and answer the question, it wasn’t clear from the deeds if they were tenants in common, but the solicitor explained it. He used his Union to draft the Will.

I know it is to late now but if a deed of trust was in place then ownership would definitely have been TIC, and if not sure he could have checked on the land registry to see if the appropriate restriction was in place. If it wasn’t then he could have split the tenancy without the need to access the marital home or needing the approval of his wife.

This is a sad and unfortunate case but no court is going to validate the will when there was nothing stopping him sorting another one and splitting the tenancy if it was nessesary.