The Court held that a PDF draft will emailed by a solicitor to the deceased and read on his iPhone constituted an informal will under s 32 of the Wills Act 1970 (WA), notwithstanding that the deceased intended to execute an engrossed hard copy but died unexpectedly before doing so. The Court found that the digital copy stored on the deceased's locked iPhone was a 'document' within s 32(1) and was 'lost' because it could not be retrieved due to the iPhone's security constraints, and admitted a forensically extracted copy of the draft will to probate in solemn form, limited until the original is proved. The five requirements for probate of a lost informal will (as articulated in Cahill v Rhodes and adopted in Powell v Dinwoodie) were treated as a unified inquiry rather than sequential independent determinations, and the deceased's unequivocal statements to multiple witnesses that he was happy with the will and intended to sign it were sufficient to establish settled testamentary intention.
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