Are wills too easy to fake? Thomas Dumont and Wendy Mathers investigate
It is notoriously difficult to prove in court that a will has been forged. However, Peter Leaver QC, sitting as a judge of the Chancery Division, ruled the will a forgery in Supple v Pender [2007] All ER (D) 195 (Feb). Until then, the writers believe that the Chancery Division may not have pronounced a will to be forged—where the claim was defended—for over 30 years.
Supple caught the imagination of the national press, and a heady mixture of greed and strong emotion fanned the flames. The case was set in the ever-decreasing Kent countryside where Len Supple’s 60-acre farm was sandwiched between Maidstone and the M20. During a previous property boom, representatives of a national building company landed on the farm in a helicopter to make Len a large offer. He sent them packing.
Len was the father of two children. Stephen, his son by his wife, Patricia (from whom he was divorced in the 1950s) was 58 by the time of the trial. He had left the
