Mistake in legal description held to be minor

Reasons for judgement were released by the Court of Appeal last week for a case called Racz Estate v. Gidney Estate, in which a beneficiary of a Will appealed one of the Will’s clauses.

The surviving widow died a few years ago, and in her Will, the most valuable asset (an apartment building) was bequeathed to her son. The building had one address, but legally consisted of four separate lots. In the Will, the legal description was incomplete. What was missing were the lot numbers (called “PIDs”) of three of the four lots.

The appellant beneficiary tried to argue that, since only one of the four lots was referred to in the Will, the other three lots ought to be divided equally among all the children.

The argument failed, mainly because the Court felt that the error, if there was one, was inconsequential and the remainder of the description of the building, in the Will, was more than adequate to properly describe the land as bequeathed to the son (who put significant work into managing it over many years).

This is not to say that the Will was flawless. A Will should be done carefully, but not
all errors are fatal!

This ad ran in the Richmond News on August 16, 2013.