According to the decision, after she died, documents that \u201cappear to be unfinished wills\u201d were found at her house, indicating that she wanted two charities, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Canadian Cancer Society, to equally share the bulk of her estate.<\/p>\n
However, an also-incomplete digital will was later discovered on a tablet in her house, which included the Alzheimer Society of British Columbia and Yukon as intended beneficiary of the estate.<\/p>\n
And, a draft email to a law firm regarding the preparation of a will was also discovered, although she never sent that email, and never completed any will.<\/p>\n
In court, the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Canadian Cancer Society applied for the unfinished physical will to be deemed to represent her final intentions, while the Alzheimer Society argued in favour of the incomplete digital will.<\/p>\n
The court found that neither will met the requirements to be considered valid under B.C. law, but it exercised its discretion in favour of the physical will \u2014 concluding that the email that she drafted, but didn\u2019t send, to a lawyer was written after the digital will was created, and that she had downloaded other online legal resources to help with the drafting of a physical will after partially filling out the digital will \u2014 giving that version priority as her likely final wishes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe November 2022 email was composed after the digital will was created,\u201d the court noted. \u201cIn the court\u2019s view, this shows that after the creation of the digital will, the deceased was still contemplating hiring a lawyer to draft her a will and prepare her estate. Even if she ultimately did not follow through, this fact thus casts doubt on the assertion that the digital will represented her fixed and final intention as of September 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n
Additionally, the physical will includes intended funeral arrangements, makes a specific bequest, and addresses the issue of her estranged sister, the court noted, adding that it \u201cconveys an air of finality.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis court concludes the physical will is the deliberate or fixed and final expression of intention, and that the deceased\u2019s testamentary intentions are expressed in this document regardless of the form of the document itself,\u201d it said \u2014 granting the orders sought by the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Canadian Cancer Society, and dismissing the application by the Alzheimer Society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to the decision, after she died, documents that \u201cappear to be unfinished wills\u201d were found at her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[128514,72,128513,32272,6854,176,61,60,6717,2900,174,175,20383],"class_list":{"0":"post-387858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-b-c-supreme-court","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-court-cases","11":"tag-electronic-records","12":"tag-estate-planning","13":"tag-finance","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-law","17":"tag-legal","18":"tag-personal-finance","19":"tag-personalfinance","20":"tag-wills"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}