You are telephoned by a very distressed potential client. She says she has just discovered that her late mother has left her entire estate to her brother. She says that her brother must have unduly influenced his mother to execute her last will because, otherwise, there was no reason for it. She instructs you to object to her mother’s last will being admitted to probate on that basis alone. What should you say in response?
Unfortunately it has always been a constant source of surprise and, it has to be said, disappointment when clients realise how difficult it is to succeed with a claim that a testator/testatrix was unduly influenced into making a specific gift in a will, or even the will itself. However, a case heard before Mr Justice Lewison in the Cardiff District Registry of the Chancery Division of the High Court in May this year may have made it easier.
