The witness beneficiary rule in S.15 of the Wills Act 1837 is outdated Essay

The witness beneficiary rule in S.15 of the Wills Act 1837 is outdated and in need of reform.Discuss this statement with reference to relevant academic and judicial comment - Essay Example 15 of the Wills Act 1837 which have prompted lawyers, paralegals, legal practitioners and academicians to observe that there is a need for amends, so as to have the pitfalls amended. One of the drawbacks in the Witness Beneficiary Rule in s. 15 of the Wills Act 1837 is the failure to capture the complexities that accompany the law of testation. Specifically, the Witness Beneficiary Rule negates a situation whereby a beneficiary of a will gets married to the main witness, 10 years after the signing of the will. This is a complex issue because the Witness Beneficiary Rule assumes that there is always a distinction between a beneficiary and a witness and this assumption fundamentally underpins and informs the legitimacy of the exaction of the will, upon the death of the testator. Instead, what is captured as a limitation, known as Gifts to an attesting witness to be void states that: if any person attests the execution of any will of any will to whom or to whose legal spouse any beneficial legacy, device, interest, estate, gift or appointment, of or affecting any real and/ or personal estate [apart from and except directions and charges for the payment of debt(s)], shall be thereby made or given such legacy, device, interest, estate, gift or appointment, shall, so far only as concerns such person or legally recognised spouse or any person claiming under such a person [a legally recognised spouse], be totally null and void, and such a person so attesting shall be admitted as a witness, to prove the execution of such will, or to demonstrate the invalidity or validity thereof, regardless such legacy, device, interest, estate, gift or appointment that has been mentioned in such will1. The provision above is therefore clearly derelict of the consideration of the circumstances that may impede the exaction of the Witness Beneficiary Rule in s. 15. To the effect of the above, solution to the complication above will be pegged on the circumstances