It was proved that a mistake had occurred in a clause giving a pecuniary legacy. The testator had intended one person to be named as the legatee, and by a mistake the draftsman had substituted the name of another. The testator was led to execute the will in the belief that the correct name appeared.
Held: the will could be admitted to probate with the name omitted. In some cases, a simple word or expression can be deleted from a will ‘if shewn to have been inserted by mistake’. By omitting the erroneous name he was creating an ambiguous situation. A court of construction might infer, on consideration of the will as a whole, that in the blank the name of the intended legatee should be understood, or it might hold that the clause was meaningless. Nevertheless his Lordship decided to omit the word. He said: ‘If a person by fraud obtained the substitution of his name for that of another in a will it would be strange if his name could not be struck out, although the rest of the clause in which it occurred became thereby meaningless. It may be that in the present case the effect of striking out the name in question will be, on the construction of the will, as it will then read, to carry out the testator’s intentions completely. It is not for me to decide that. But even if to strike out a name inserted in error and leave a blank have not the effect of giving full effect to the testator’s wishes, I do not see why we should not, so far as we can, though we may not completely, carry out his intentions’
Judges:
Jeune J
Citations:
[1891] P 247
Cited by:
Cited – Marley v Rawlings and Another SC 22-Jan-2014
A husband and wife had each executed the will which had been prepared for the other, owing to an oversight on the part of their solicitor; the question which arose was whether the will of the husband, who died after his wife, was valid. The parties . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Wills and Probate
Updated: 11 May 2022; Ref: scu.536792