The High Court has refused an application to admit a photocopy of a farmer’s will to probate, finding that the applicant did not show the original remained unrevoked when the farmer died.
Ms Justice Butler ruled that the evidence established, on the balance of probabilities, that Martin Healy’s will was duly executed in 2003. She was also satisfied, though more marginally, that the photocopy was authentic. But the original will could not be found after Mr Healy’s death, and the court found no evidence explaining how it was lost or destroyed.
Mr Healy, a retired farmer from Murroe, Co Limerick, died in June 2019. His will named his grandnephew, Gerard Healy, as executor and left him most of a farm in Murroe. It also left a parcel of land in Co Tipperary to Mr Healy’s brother, Brendan, and part of land in Murroe to his nephew, Shane. The will had no residuary clause, so the estate’s bank account would pass at least partly under intestacy rules.
The will was prepared with the assistance of a Dominican priest, Father Cyril Ross, and witnessed by Ross and Father Foley. Foley later provided an affidavit confirming execution. The Dominican Order told the court it had no knowledge of the original’s whereabouts.
Gerard Healy said the deceased had shown him a sealed envelope in 2003 and told him it contained his will. In a later affidavit, he clarified that he never saw inside it. The judge found that this left no evidential basis for his claims that the envelope held the photocopy, that the deceased mistook it for the original, or that the deceased had never possessed the original. The applicant also gave no account of when or how the photocopy came into his possession.
The court applied the evidential presumption that a will last in a deceased person’s possession, but missing after death, was destroyed by that person with an intention to revoke it. The applicant had to rebut that presumption to have the copy admitted. Although the judge accepted that the applicant was close to his granduncle, that relationship alone did not resolve the gaps in the evidence.
The court therefore found that the applicant had not discharged the burden of showing the will remained unrevoked at the date of death, or that any loss or destruction occurred without an intention to revoke. The copy was not admitted to probate. The judgment did not determine how the original disappeared or whether Mr Healy had in fact destroyed it.