An Inheritance Will -- which many believe is sacrosanct -- can be declared invalid and overturned or amended in the best interest of the deceased's immediate family if it excludes the surviving spouse and, or children, the High Court has ruled. In a landmark ruling on a challenge made by a Mutare widow who had been excluded from her husband's estate, Justice Loice Matanda-Moyo declared the woman the sole beneficiary of the matrimonial home in one of the leafy suburbs in the eastern border town.
Justice Matanda-Moyo said the right to distribute an estate through a Will was not absolute if the writer disregarded the rights of beneficiaries as enshrined in the Constitution. In the case which prompted her ruling, Ms Lily Lilian Nyamushanya was left out in the Will authored by her late husband, Mr Pythias Nyamushanya, despite being the sole surviving spouse staying at the home in question when the man died.
...