{"id":6162,"date":"2018-10-12T12:38:31","date_gmt":"2018-10-12T12:38:31","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2019-06-17T12:52:26","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T12:52:26","slug":"re-heys-deceased","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lawteacher.net\/cases\/re-heys-deceased.php","title":{"rendered":"Re Heys (deceased) [1914]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Re Heys (deceased) [1914] P. 192<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Wills \u2013 <em>Inter-Vivos Significance <\/em>\u2013 Revocability \u2013 Joint Tenancy \u2013 Severability<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"facts\">Facts<\/h3>\n<p>A husband wrote a will bequeathing his property to his wife.&nbsp; The couple divorced and the husband remarried, but upon divorce, the husband signed a binding contract with his wife promising not to revoke his first will.&nbsp; He wrote a second will leaving all his property to his new wife.&nbsp; Upon his death, his first wife sued claiming that the property was hers as he had promised not to revoke his first will, and to do so would be a breach of contract.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"issues\">Issues<\/h3>\n<p>Whether or not the husband was entitled to revoke his first will after being bound contractually not to do so.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"decision\">Decision\/Outcome<\/h3>\n<p>The will had been properly revoked and the second will, made later in time was the deceased\u2019s proper testamentary document.&nbsp; Wills are, by their very nature revocable, and even a binding contract not to revoke a will cannot prevent it being revoked.&nbsp; Indeed, until the demise of the testator himself, the will has no legal relevance and no standing.&nbsp; A testator is free to change, revoke or adapt the will at any time before his death and a binding contract to prevent this will not be successful in preventing its revocation.&nbsp; The second will must be allowed to go to probate regardless.&nbsp; However, the fact that the contract to the wife was breached did allow the first wife a cause of action against the deceased\u2019s estate for breach of contract, meaning that she was in any event able to recover.&nbsp; This was a form of mutual will which could be enforced as a contract.&nbsp; Whilst the husband and his first wife were joint tenants, the creation of mutual wills severed the joint tenancy leading to them being tenants in common.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A husband wrote a will bequeathing his property to his wife. The couple divorced and the husband remarried<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85],"class_list":["post-6162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cases","tag-uk-law"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v26.6) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Re Heys (deceased) [1914] | LawTeacher.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A husband wrote a will bequeathing his property to his wife. 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