Cohabitee acted in haste and repented at leisure after forging her partner's will

When Gillian Clemo's partner, Chris John, died intestate at the age of 47, it looked as if his daughter and wife (from whom he had separated seven years earlier) would be in line to inherit. Three days after parties debated their respective roles in the intestacy, Miss Clemo - in the words of prosecuting Counsel during the trial at Newport Crown Court - "miraculously" found a will at the luxury residence they had shared. After hearing submissions from a forensic handwriting expert that the signatures on the will were forgeries, and the prosecution highlighting some "unbelievable errors", such as twice misspelling Mr John's daughter's name, a jury found Miss Clemo guilty of forgery under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981. The judge found her to have been of previous good character and fined her £8,515. In a further twist, after Miss Clemo had produced the forged will, Mr John's estranged wife, Helen, had produced her own codicil, which on arrest she admitted having falsified, and received a police caution.

The frustrating feature of this recent judgment for lawyers advising in this area is that Miss Clemo may have been in a better position in relation to Mr John's estate than she feared. As a cohabitee of more than two years, she may have been able to bring a claim for reasonable financial provision under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, and such an award is made after consideration of all the circumstances. One point of interest here is that Mr John and his estranged wife had both firmly believed that their divorce had been finalised in 2001; in fact, such was Helen John's surprise at finding out during the investigations into the validity of the will that they were actually still married (they had been granted a decree nisi but no decree absolute had ever been lodged), that she collapsed on hearing the news.

For further advice, please contact Anthony Morton-Hooper on +44 (0) 20 7440 7030 or by e-mail, or Mark Keenan on +44 (0) 20 7440 7129 or by e-mail.