Pretoria - Shortly before he died aged close to 90, Jacobus Scheepers changed his will and disinherited his wife Magdalena, to whom he’d been married most of his life.
Now the question of who will care for her hangs in the balance as her son, Wynand Scheepers, took the matter to court.
Scheepers jnr, of Modimolle, said his father’s will had been drafted in English, a language his father could not speak nor understand.
He said his father had only passed Standard 2 and was not fluent in English.
Before he died in hospital earlier this month, Scheepers had been staying with a couple, identified only as the De Beers. They, the respondents, are now the sole beneficiaries of his estate.
His son brought an urgent application to court to ask that the will be declared null and void, and a will of February last year be accepted as valid. In terms of this will, the couple who were married in community of property, agreed that in the event of the death of one spouse, the other would be the beneficiary of the estate after small cash bequests had gone to their three children.
Judge Corrie van der Westhuizen ruled that any party that opposed Scheepers’s request for the previous will be be reinstated must do so by December 6.
Scheepers said he was only told about a new will shortly after his father’s funeral.
He said he had every reason to believe that his father had been in no physical or mental state to have drafted a new will so shortly before his death.
He also had no reason to believe that his father would exclude his mother from the will, as up to his death, he had paid for her care at a facility.
He had also, up to shortly before his death, diligently visited her at the facility.
Scheepers said his father’s mental state was highly questionable at the time the last will had been signed, and argued that he could not understand what he was signing.
He also questioned the motive of the respondents, who had already taken possession of his father’s assets, and he feared they would get hold of his father’s pension benefits too.
The future care of his mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease in the facility is in jeopardy as the family were dependent on the estate to pay for this.