court should pronounce against the 1989 Will, the 1988 Will and the 1984 Codicil,
and pronounce for the force and validity of the 1974 Will. There is also an alternative
claim, with which I am not concerned at this stage, that even if the 1989 Will is valid,
in the sense that it was validly executed and Bane had capacity to make it, the gift in
favour of the CPA is nevertheless void for uncertainty and/or as a purpose trust for
purposes which are not exclusively charitable, with the result in either case that
Bane’s estate devolves as if he had died intestate. Zoran would again be the sole
beneficiary of the estate on an intestacy, so this alternative claim provides another
possible route for him to succeed in his claim to be beneficially entitled to his father’s
estate.
7.
Because the alternative claim raises the question whether the gift in the 1989 Will
would be void as a non-charitable purpose trust, the interests of charity clearly needed
to be represented before the court could determine it. Accordingly, Her Majesty’s
Attorney General was joined by consent as the third defendant by an order of Deputy
Master Cousins made on 14 August 2006 in order to represent the interests of charity.
8.
Zoran’s pleaded case is now set out in the Amended Particulars of Claim dated 29
May 2007, and a Response to a request by the CPA for further information dated 24
May 2007.
9.
The Amended Defence and Counterclaim of the first and second defendants on behalf
of the CPA is dated 16 June 2007. It includes this admission in paragraph 8(22):
“It is admitted that the delusion from which the Deceased
suffered was an irrational belief that there was an international
conspiracy of dark forces in which his sister, his mother and (at
times) his wife were active participants and that he and the
Claimant were victims of that conspiracy.”
It is therefore common ground, not only that Bane suffered from a delusion about the
existence of an international conspiracy in which his sister, his mother and his wife
were implicated, but also that he believed Zoran to be a victim of that conspiracy.
10.
The Defence of the third defendant, the Attorney General, is dated 3 November 2006.
It is directed towards establishing, in the interests of charity, that the 1989 Will
created valid charitable trusts, or alternatively that it made a valid gift to the CPA
while making it known (without imposing any legal obligation) how Bane wanted the
gift to be applied.
11.
By an order of Master Teverson made on 18 October 2006, each party was given
permission to adduce the evidence of a single medical expert on the issue of Bane’s
testamentary capacity. I have been much assisted by the expert evidence of the two
distinguished psychiatrists who were instructed, Dr Adrianne Reveley for Zoran and
Professor Robert Howard for the CPA.
12.
As I have already indicated, the parties are agreed that all questions of construction of
the 1989 Will should be deferred for consideration on a future occasion, should the
need to determine them arise. It is obvious that they will not need to be determined if
the 1989 Will is invalid for want of testamentary capacity. Accordingly, Counsel for
the Attorney General, Miss Lucy Wilson-Barnes, played almost no part in the hearing