Supreme Court
NEW DELHI: Courts will view a will with suspicion if its maker, despite sharing a life-long loving relationship with his wife, seeks to disinherit her and bequeaths the property to distant relatives, Supreme Court has said.Doubts over the genuineness of such a will, allegedly penned by an illiterate agriculturist 18 years before his death, gave a widow from Himachal Pradesh the right to retain ancestral property after a 33-year-long legal battle.The woman and her heirs moved SC against a Himachal HC judgment in 2016. A bench of Justices Manoj Misra and K V Viswanthan reserved the verdict in March 2025.Writing the judgment, which was delivered Tuesday, Justice Misra said it was incomprehensible that even though the woman took care of her husband till his death in 1992, he would execute a will in 1974 giving away his land to his brother’s children. The alleged will also made the false claim that the man’s relatives were living with him to take care of him.”…Considered in conjunction with the circumstance that the testator was an illiterate agriculturist, the whole perception about the will changes,” SC said.
