Several months after he signed a will in front of witnesses, in which he bequeathed his property to his young children and his wife, the deceased wrote a handwritten farewell letter in which he again stated that he bequeathes his property to his young children but did not refer to his wife's share or the previous will.
The Court rejected the children's claim that the will was cancelled and determined that the farewell letter does not cancel or replace it. A testator can revoke his will, inter alia, by creating a new will. Probate of a handwritten requires that it is written entirely in the testator's handwriting, is dated and signed by him. The Court can uphold a will despite defects, provided that the basic elements of the will were met. One such a basic element is the inclusion of a succession type provision (bequeathing or excluding). Here, it is a handwritten document that was not signed by the testator. Moreover, this defect cannot be remedied because the document was not worded using the imperative language, the document lacks essential details such as the identity of all the heirs, the details of the property, or at least the majority of the property, and it does not even have any reference to the previous will or the exclusion of the testator's wife from the inheritance granted to her in the previous will. Therefore, the letter lacks an explicit exclusion or bequeathing provision,cannot serve as a new will that comes to replace the existing one and the will should be probated.