Malcolm Chenery, an avid cricket fan who died in 2021, was not keen on formality. His will, the High Court has heard, was scrawled on the back of a packet of mince pies and frozen fish cartons.
That disregard for convention nearly left the British Diabetic Association £180,000 out of pocket after Chenery had bequeathed the charity his estate. The legality of his informal will was challenged in court on the technical basis that it was spread over two different food boxes.
But the charity, better known as Diabetes UK, has now persuaded a judge in the High Court that the bizarre document satisfies the requirements of the 1837 Wills Act and can therefore be entered into probate — meaning the charity will benefit.
During the hearing, the judge was told that Chenery, a self-professed loner, remembered attending York cricket ground with his mother as the happiest times of his life.
Lawyers told the court that Chenery killed himself three years ago at an unknown age and that his estate included a three-bedroom house, cash, jewellery and an extensive collection of ornaments and pottery.
Shortly before his death, Chenery drafted his unique last will. The first page was handwritten on the back of a Young’s frozen fish fillets box, with the second inscribed on cardboard from a Mr Kipling mince pies box.
The documents expressed a wish that Chenery’s house and the rest of his estate should go to the diabetic association as several of his family members had died from the condition.
But the charity encountered a potential legal barrier when officials attempted to admit the homemade will to probate as the two pages were from different food boxes.
The court heard that Chenery’s neighbours had witnessed and signed the mince pies page. But the fish fillets page — which stipulated that the house and contents should go to the charity — could not automatically be read as being part of the same document because it did not come from the same Mr Kipling box.
Nonetheless, Sam Chandler, a barrister representing the charity, asked the judge, Katherine McQuail, to rule that the will satisfied the requirements of the 1837 Wills Act and could be entered into probate and the money claimed.
He told the court that if that application were rejected, the money would have been divided between Chenery’s sisters and nieces, despite “long-standing bad blood” existing between them.
The charity’s barrister, however, told the judge that the witnesses to the will said that they did not see the first page when signing the second. In addition, the fact that two different cardboard food boxes were used to draft the will led to uncertainty over whether probate could be granted.
“The principal question for the court is whether these pieces of cardboard can be admitted to probate in solemn form,” Chandler told the judge. The barrister noted that the charity’s claim to the bequest was uncontested and had the “support of family members”.
Chandler said that “various family members have explained that diabetes runs in the family”, which was why Chenery named the charity as his principal beneficiary.
Urging the judge to approve the unusual will, the barrister noted that “the two pages are written in the same pen. That seems to indicate they were made at the same time. There is overlapping subject matter”.
He added that it was the charity’s position that “the court should have no hesitation in proclaiming in favour of this document” as “an intestacy would frustrate the testator’s intentions in light of what the family say about his intentions”.
And Chandler reminded the judge that there was “a longstanding principle that the court should lean against intestacy”.
Backing the charity, the judge said that it was presumed that Chenery “had not intended to die intestate”. The judge ruled that she was “satisfied that the two documents should be admitted in solemn form to probate as the last will of the deceased”.
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