Forging Wills: Avoiding Problems In A Digital Age

Writing for Wealth Briefing, John Darnton from our private wealth team discusses the darker side of wills and estate planning, in which modern technology is being exploited to forge wills.

As property prices rise and technology progresses, media outlets have recently reported that fraud is becoming more prevalent as it becomes increasingly harder to identify false documents.

‘Forging documents can have both criminal and civil consequences for the perpetrator. So, for example, there are offences which can result in substantial periods of imprisonment under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981. Because the burden of proof is lower, most often it is seen in the context of civil proceedings to challenge the validity of a disputed document but, for instance, in August a Cumbrian sheep farmer was found guilty of five charges of fraud by false representation following her attempts to get hold of her late neighbour’s farm using forged documents.’

The full article is available to read on the Wealth Briefing website.