Avery Associates, specialists in all matters concerning valuations for probate bring you the latest IHT news…….
A 46-year-old woman from Cambridgeshire has been sentenced for forging the will of her late partner in order to make herself the main beneficiary, according to Cambridge News.
Karen Phillips returned home one day to find that her partner, Stephen Chambers, who was 56, had died of heart failure.
But when she alerted his family to the news, she claimed that before he had died he had written a letter which had turned out to be a will.
She claimed that he had left the letter at her mother’s house and that her mother had opened it, discovered it was a will and sent it to a solicitor. For this reason the family of the deceased were unable to see a copy of the letter.
The estate of Mr Chambers was worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, and Phillips claimed that he had given her the majority of it, whilst only leaving relatively small amounts to other members of the family.
However, once the family saw the letter they became suspicious and so contacted the police. As a result, the police arrested Phillips on suspicion of inheritance fraud.
At first she denied the charges, but she soon admitted that she had indeed forged the will and had got it signed by two witnesses. She claimed that her reason for doing so was that he would have wanted it for her and her children.
She was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to a few months in prison, and the two fake witnesses were both given police cautions for their part in the scam.
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