Justice Cory Gilmore of the Ontario Superior Court recently made a decision overturning a Will that she found had been motivated for racist reasons. In the decision of Spence v. BMO Trust Company, Justice Gilmore found that the testator (person who made the Will) had left nothing to one of his daughters because she had had a child with a man who was of a different race.
Available for the Judge, which was not by way of Affidavit evidence and which was not contradicted in any way, was the reason for the testator exclusion of his daughter of whom he had been long been estranged from.
The Will on its face contained no such racist language. The established law which this decision runs contrary to, is that one is not supposed to look outside the four corners of the written Will itself, and not to look at the testator’s motives or state of mind (aside from competency) when drafting their Will.
In other words, no one would complain about Justice Gilmore’s decision had the Will stated the racist reasons within it.
The estate legal community is in a tizzy over this decision in which the Judge in essence found the Will to be void and simply divided up the estate amongst the testator’s two surviving children in accordance with the terms of the Secession Law Reform Act.
It will take some time to see whether or not the decision of Spence v. BMO Trust Company is the leading edge of judicial intervention in changing Wills that perhaps they should not.
There is a legal maximum that hard facts make bad law, but this very well be an example of that.
Stay tuned as we watch to see if this is an anomaly or a trend setter.
