A Will is a solemn document that specifies how a person's property or assets must be distributed after his/her death. For a will to become valid, two conditions must be met: age of majority and the testator's mental health, while drafting it. A testator is a person who makes a Will. Age of majority is the legal threshold for an individual to become an adult (complete 18 years of age.) Will is an important document as it is a legal declaration of the intention of the Author with respect to his properties, both movable and immovable, carried into effect after his death. They must mention the properties with accurate details to identity the properties at the time of execution of the Will.
However, complication often arises when there is a misdescription of a particular property or properties in the Will. An old person may write their Will and mistakenly put the wrong address of property in the Will. The intention of writing the correct address however can still be gathered from the fact that they are the owner of the property in question but have made only a simple clerical error say by writing the house number as 8 instead of 10. There are two types of mistakes possible in law, mistake of fact and mistake of law. In such a situation, two questions would arise:
- Intention of the testator; and
- Validity of the Will vis-à-vis capacity of the author/ will maker
The question here is whether the misdescription would render the entire Will invalid, or just the provision which is allocating the incorrectly described property to a person. Any dispute regarding Will and inheritance is a matter of civil concern. The cardinal rule is to give effect to the actual intention of the testator, and that is what Courts adjudicate upon. If there is no confusion with the regard to the terms used in the Will, extrinsic facts need not be considered. However, if there is any doubt, Section 82 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 (herein after 'Succession Act') makes it clear that meaning of any clause in a Will shall be collected from the entire document and that all its parts shall be construed with reference to each other. Section 84 of the Act further clarifies that if a clause gives two separate meanings, then the one which better gives effect to Will as a whole, shall be adopted. The fact that the Court must endeavour to determine the true intention of the testator while reading a Will has been well settled and remains undisputed.
The Hon'ble Supreme Court in Lakshamana Nadar & Ors v R. Ramier1 had held that a Court's primary duty is to ascertain from the language employed, the intentions of the testator while keeping other factors such as surrounding circumstances, family relationships etc in mind. The Court must put itself in the testator's "armchair" so to say. This stance was mirrored in Siddamurthy Jayarami Reddy (D) by L.Rs v Godi Jaya Rami Reddy & Ors2 wherein the Hon'ble Supreme Court emphasized on the need for Courts to put themselves in the position of a testator to understand their intention. Thetestator's intention must be given effect to, and the Will must be read and construed as a whole to gather the same. Every disposition of the testator should be given effect to as far as possible while being consistent with the testator's desire, the court observed.
With regards to the issue of misdescription of property, the Hon'ble Supreme Court in Shivakumar v Sharanabasappa3 held that the Succession Act itself has made elaborate provisions for the construction of a Will, encompassed within Sections 74 to 111 of the Succession Act, which make the legislature's intention clear. Any irrelevant misdescription or error must not operate against the Will especially if the identification of the property was not in doubt despite the error. The Will must be given effect to once it is found to have been executed by the testator in a sound state of mind and of their own free will.
On the question of whether misdescription of a property in a will could raise suspicions with regards to a testator's soundness of mind, the Courts have consistently held this is not something that can be proved easily or in a cavalier manner. The Courts in general have a high yardstick when it comes to proving the same. The burden of proof further is placed on the party contesting the Will on these grounds where they must prove unsoundness of mind beyond reasonable doubt.
In Ashok Baury v State4 the Delhi High Court held that to prove unsoundness of mind in the absence of medical records, one would need to prove to the Court that the testator has consistently engaged in conduct which raises such a suspicion and thus supports said assertion. Thus, the bar required to be met in order to conclusively prove unsoundness of mind is relatively high and a mere misdescription may not be sufficient proof.
In the context of the effect of misdescription of property on the testamentary capacity of the testator, the Calcutta High Court in the case of Soumitra Dhar v Ashim Kumar Nandy5 upheld its previous observation made in Gunjari Das v Subal Chandra Das & Ors6 and stated that a misdescription alone is no indication of incapacity if circumstances surrounding the drafting of the Will do not indicate so as well. In the latter case, the testator had lived on for four years after the Will was drawn and the Will's execution and attestation was also duly proved as per Section 63 of the Succession Act. There was also nothing placed on record to demonstrate that the conduct of the testator had also changed such that it showed a loss of mental capacity in the time before or after the Will was drafted. In such a case, the Court held that the misdescription was irrelevant.
The bottom line is easily drawn. If the error is a mere misdescription and from the language of the Will and other circumstances/factors, the property in question is clear, the Court need not get stuck on technicalities. It must instead read the Will in such a manner that best fulfills the true intention of the testator. The misdescription alone is not reason enough so as to render the entire document suspect.
Footnotes
1. 1953 SCR 848
2. (2011) 5 SCC 65
3. (2021) 11 SCC 277
4. (2021) 279 DLT 661
5. 2016 SCC OnLine Cal 6523
6. 2009 SCC OnLine Cal 1289
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
