The Court held that where a sole beneficiary under a will murdered the testator, the common law forfeiture rule applied to preclude the beneficiary from taking, and the gift over provision in the will (conditioned on the beneficiary predeceasing the testator) did not operate because the contingency had not literally occurred — following the literal construction approach in [name withheld] v [name withheld] and declining to apply the rule in [name withheld] v [name withheld]. Consequently, the September 2015 Will could not effectively distribute the estate, and the Court admitted the penultimate will (October 2004) to probate in solemn form, appointing the deceased's brother as administrator. The Court also found serious concerns about the validity of the September 2015 Will based on suspicious circumstances including its preparation by a witness-beneficiary's sister, multiple inconsistent versions, spelling errors, and evidence suggesting the testator may not have known its contents, and held that notice to potential beneficiaries under the gift over was unnecessary as any claim by them would be doomed to fail.
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