A will purported to have been made by an elderly woman during lockdown has been declared invalid because she had not signed it in the presence of two or more witnesses, as required by Section 9 of the Wills Act 1837.
The will was dated 25 April 2020, about a month after the first COVID-19 lockdown came into effect. It named the woman’s second youngest child as the beneficiary of her residual estate and appointed him as sole executor. She passed away in November 2022. Her eldest son contended that the will was invalid and that a will made in 2017 was her true last will.
The witnesses to the 2020 will, two of the woman’s neighbours, gave evidence that they had signed it in her back garden while she was at a table in the dining room. She had not acknowledged them or spoken with them, and she had looked unwell. The beneficiary had told them that the will needed to be witnessed as an emergency because of the woman’s ill health and the COVID-19 pandemic, and that when it was safe to do so, her solicitor would visit to explain the will to her and make sure she understood it. The neighbours both stated that they had not seen her sign the will and that they had not been able to see her when they signed it.
The beneficiary maintained that his mother had said hello to the neighbours and had thanked them for agreeing to witness the will. They had watched her sign the will and had had an unobstructed view from about eight feet away. He had passed the will from his mother to them and they had signed it.
The court found the neighbours to be credible witnesses, noting that they had each given evidence while the other was outside the courtroom and so had not heard each other’s evidence. The beneficiary’s evidence had been very detailed, to the point of stating what his mother had said to the neighbours on the day the will had been signed. However, he was unable to recall why he had called an ambulance for her the day before. His claim that he had read the execution instruction sheet and the will to the neighbours, and also referred back to the instruction sheet at each stage of the process, was at odds with the neighbours’ evidence that they had been in the garden for less than five minutes. The court found the neighbours’ evidence far more persuasive than his, and considered it difficult to avoid the conclusion that he had not been truthful.
In the circumstances, the court found that the will had not been executed in accordance with Section 9, because the woman’s signature had not been made or acknowledged by her in the presence of two or more witnesses present at the same time. It was therefore invalid.