Sisters go to Court over Mother's Will

A successful Queensland business woman has become embroiled in a bitter inheritance dispute with her sister, reports the Courier Mail.

The dispute centres on the estate of their late mother, Maria Russo, who died in March 2016 at the age of 102.

Maria had written a Will in 1996, but she later added a codicil that left a legacy of $1 million to her daughter, Sarina Russo, plus additional money to meet property costs. Maria had lived with Sarina in her daughter’s penthouse in Brisbane, and the codicil explained that the legacy was to reflect the financial contribution Sarina had made to her mother’s welfare.

However, Sarina’s older sister, Rita Pennisi, claims that the instructions for this codicil did not come from her mother, but instead were given to a lawyer by Sarina.

Mrs Pennisi also claims that her mother’s mental health at the time meant she was not able to understand what the codicil meant.

In NSW a will is only valid if it is written by someone who is aged 18 and over, is of sound mind and capable of understanding what he or she is doing.

If it can be proved that someone didn’t satisfy these requirements at the time they wrote their Will then this Will can be declared invalid, and therefore people will often seek to challenge a Will on the grounds of a lack of mental capacity.

However, the existence of a mental illness or other disease does not automatically mean a lack of the requisite mental capacity. Proving a lack of mental capacity in court when challenging a Will is usually done through medical records, or by the testimony of those who observed the Will-maker at the time the Will was written.

In this case, it was claimed that Maria Russo’s understanding was further hampered by the fact that the codicil was written in English, while her first language was Sicilian. Mrs Pennisi believes her mother was under the impression her Will would leave equal inheritances to all four of her children.

Mrs Pennisi has asked the court to rule the 1996 Will and subsequent codicil invalid, which would mean that Maria would be deemed to have died intestate. Her estate would then be distributed according to state laws and would be shared out equally between Maria’s three surviving children and the children of her deceased daughter Rosina.

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