A will signed in haste from a hospital bed during the Covid-19 pandemic was rejected by the Mpumalanga High Court as not being valid, as it was not signed in the presence of two witnesses, as required by law.
The devastating impact of the pandemic and all the sad memories it left behind came back to life in the facts of this application, Deputy Judge President Takalani Ratshibvumo remarked in his judgment.
Patrick Reniers (the deceased) and his wife of 15 years, Francina Reniers (the first respondent), came face to face with death when they both contracted the virus.
The deceased was immediately admitted to Mediclinic Hospital, Mbombela, but his wife was not so lucky, as there were no more beds available. She resorted to self-medication at home, and she lived, while her husband succumbed to the virus while in the hospital.
Before his death, the deceased and his wife saw the devastating consequences of contracting the virus from all those that surrounded them and came to terms with the real possibility that they might not survive.
They then decided to write a joint will. Their financial advisor was asked to draft a will for them, and he told her to see to it that she and her husband signed it in the presence of two witnesses.
The wife asked her broker to take it to the hospital so that her husband could sign it. He took the document to Mediclinic Hospital, where, following a lengthy process, he was finally allowed into a hospital ward where the deceased was being kept alone, under oxygen supply.
Once inside, he handed over the three-page document and a pen to the deceased, who signed all the pages without reading and handed it back to him. The broker then added his signature to the document, and the broker’s wife, later at home, signed it as the second witness.
While the Master’s Office accepted the will, a daughter of the deceased from his first marriage was aggrieved as she was completely left out of inheriting anything.
She found it hard to accept that her father would bequeath nothing to her or any of his children, whereas in his former will, he had all his children as his beneficiaries.
She was also concerned about various inaccuracies in the will, including that he and his second wife were married out of community of property, with the accrual. The daughter stated that this was not the case.
She also questioned why some of his grandchildren’s names were misspelled on the document. The wife, however, made it out to be typing errors.
The court pointed out that, in terms of the law, a signature must be made by the testator in the presence of two or more competent witnesses at the same time, which did not happen here.
“The undisputed facts of this case are to the effect that neither the deceased nor the first respondent (wife) signed the will in the presence of the two witnesses… This leaves the will non-compliant with the formalities,” the judge said in declaring the will invalid.
