Marley v Rawlings & Anor [2014] UKSC 2

A husband and wife executed each other's wills by mistake due to their solicitor's oversight. After both died, the Supreme Court held the husband's will could be rectified under section 20 of the Administration of Justice Act 1982 as a clerical error, validating the intended bequest.

Facts

On 17 May 1999, Alfred and Maureen Rawlings executed wills prepared by their solicitor. The wills were in identical mirror terms: each spouse left their entire estate to the other, but if the other predeceased them (or failed to survive by one month), the estate would pass to Terry Marley, the appellant, whom they treated as their son but who was not related to them. Owing to an oversight by the solicitor (candidly admitted in his witness statement), each spouse was handed and signed the will intended for the other. The solicitor and his secretary attested both documents.

Mrs Rawlings died in 2003 and her estate passed to her husband without the mistake being noticed. When Mr Rawlings died in August 2006, leaving approximately £70,000 in his estate, the error was discovered. The respondents, Mr and Mrs Rawlings’ two sons, challenged the validity of the will signed by Mr Rawlings. If valid (as rectified), Mr Marley would inherit; if invalid, Mr Rawlings would have died intestate and the sons would inherit.

Proudman J dismissed Mr Marley’s claim, holding that the will did not satisfy section 9 of the Wills Act 1837 and could not be rectified under section 20 of the Administration of Justice Act 1982. The Court of Appeal upheld her decision on the section 9 ground.

Issues

The Supreme Court had to determine:

• Whether the will, properly interpreted, could be read as the document Mr Rawlings intended to sign;
• Whether Mr Rawlings’ knowledge and approval could validate the will by means of deletions;
• Whether the will could be rectified under section 20(1)(a) of the 1982 Act as a “clerical error”, including whether a document that did not satisfy section 9 formalities could nonetheless be a “will” capable of rectification.

Arguments

Appellant

Mr Ham QC primarily argued for rectification under section 20, contending the two wills could be read together revealing the obvious mistake. He also advanced alternative arguments based on interpretation and on the excision of parts of the will not known and approved by the testator.

Respondents

Mr Le Poidevin QC accepted that it was clear what Mr Rawlings intended, but submitted the exercise was one of rectification, not interpretation. He contended the document was not a “will” within section 20 because it failed section 9 and lacked knowledge and approval, and that the solicitor’s error of handing over the wrong document was not a “clerical error”.

Judgment

Approach to interpretation of wills

Lord Neuberger held that wills should be interpreted in the same way as contracts, notices and patents: by identifying the intention of the party using the words in their documentary, factual and commercial context. Section 21 of the 1982 Act confirms this approach and, where it applies, permits direct evidence of the testator’s intention. However, the Court declined to decide the interpretation argument, preferring to address rectification.

Deletions argument

The Court rejected the deletions argument. While words or clauses can be deleted where not known or approved by the testator, it was inappropriate to select phrases for deletion from a will intended for someone else to produce, by happenstance, compliance with the testator’s intentions. The proposed deletions only worked because Mrs Rawlings predeceased her husband, illustrating the haphazard nature of the exercise.

Rectification

On rectification, the Court held:

• Wholesale correction is not ruled out in principle; there is no restriction on the extent of rectification provided the testator’s intention is clear.
• The document was a “will” for the purposes of section 20 despite potential issues with section 9 or knowledge and approval. Section 9’s opening words themselves treat a non-compliant document as a “will”. Section 20 applies to any document bona fide intended to be a will. The Court of Appeal was wrong to require formal validity as a precondition to rectification — this would cut down section 20’s beneficial operation.
• In fact, section 9(a) was satisfied because Mr Rawlings signed the document, and section 9(b) was satisfied because he intended his signature to give effect to the will.
• The error was a “clerical error” within section 20(1)(a). The expression should be given a wide meaning — a mistake arising from office work of a routine nature such as preparing, organising the execution of, or sending documents. To distinguish between a solicitor who accidentally cut and pasted the wrong text (plainly clerical) and one who handed over the wrong document would be capricious, as the essential nature of the mistake is the same.

Lord Neuberger relied on the summary by Blackburne J in Bell v Georgiou, while expanding its scope, and noted the thrust of sections 17–21 of the 1982 Act is in favour of flexibility and saving wills.

Lord Hodge

Lord Hodge provided observations on how Scots law might approach the problem, noting the remedy of partial reduction and declarator, and the Scottish Law Commission’s recommendation that statutory rectification be extended to testamentary documents.

Implications

The decision establishes that section 20(1)(a) of the Administration of Justice Act 1982 has a broad reach. A “clerical error” extends beyond mere slips of the pen or typing errors to include mistakes arising from routine office work, including a solicitor handing the wrong document to a testator for execution.

The judgment confirms that a document need not satisfy the section 9 formalities of the Wills Act 1837, nor reflect the testator’s knowledge and approval of its contents, before the court can consider rectification under section 20: a document bona fide intended to be a will suffices. Rectification operates retrospectively and can validate what would otherwise be an invalid testamentary instrument.

The decision also aligns the interpretation of wills with the contextual approach applied to contracts and other unilateral documents, endorsing the principle that courts interpret documents having regard to their context rather than in a vacuum.

Practically, the ruling matters to testators, intended beneficiaries, and the solicitors who draft wills. It provides a route to cure egregious drafting and execution errors without undermining the formal statutory framework. However, the Court was careful to note that the greater the extent of correction sought, the steeper the task for a claimant, and that rectification remains tied to clear evidence of the testator’s intention and the nature of the mistake. The boundary between section 20(1)(a) and section 20(1)(b) (failure to understand instructions) must be preserved — clerical error cannot subsume errors of law, expertise, or misunderstanding of instructions.

Verdict: Appeal allowed. The Supreme Court ordered that the will signed by Mr Rawlings be rectified so that it contains the typed parts of the will signed by the late Mrs Rawlings in place of the typed parts of the will signed by Mr Rawlings.

Source: Marley v Rawlings & Anor [2014] UKSC 2