Daniele du Plessis – who challenged the procedure to get her father Patrick Reniers to sign a new will four days before he died of Covid – has succeeded in having the document declared invalid.

According to a Sunday Times report, Du Plessis told the Mpumalanga High Court (Mbombela) that she was concerned her father was coerced into signing a document he would not have agreed to and that he would not have left his children without an inheritance nor got the names of his grandchildren wrong.

Deputy Judge President Vincent Ratshibvumo found the will was not correctly authorised and ruled against widow Francina Reniers, who argued that the document was valid and correctly witnessed.

The judge said the couple realised they might not survive the Covid pandemic and decided to write a joint will.

The court heard that a financial adviser of the Liberty Standard Bank Group drafted the will and had it delivered to Francina. She signed the document at home in White River in the presence of an Outsurance broker who then took it to her husband in hospital.

He signed all three pages without reading them. The broker then signed the will and filled in the date and place.

After Patrick died, the document was presented to the Master of the High Court by his widow and accepted as his last will.

However, the Sunday Times notes a previous will dated July 1987 listed all of his children as beneficiaries.

Added to Du Plessis’ concerns were inaccuracies in the new will she believed did not accurately reflect her father’s wishes.

The first inaccuracy lay in reference to the couple’s marriage contract. Their prenuptial contract dated May 2006 showed they were married out of community of property without accrual, while the joint will classified the marriage as having been out of community of property but with accrual. 

The second concern lay in how Patrick’s four grandchildren were nominated as conditional beneficiaries. The judge said one of them was listed with the wrong surname and the first name of a second was incorrectly spelt.

Francina admitted to the inaccuracies but dismissed them as ‘typos’.

Du Plessis was also concerned that while her father had named all his other grandchildren as beneficiaries, he left out her son. Francina said that was deliberate as he never saw or met the boy.

Ratshibvumo found that the will did not comply with the formalities required to make it legal, that neither the deceased nor his wife signed the will in the presence of two witnesses and that it was not signed in the presence of the testators.

The will was thus declared invalid. Francina was ordered to pay the costs of the case.

Full Sunday Times report

Judgment