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A New South Wales court has upheld the will of a man who stipulated his children must become Catholic in order to receive their inheritance.
Patrick Carroll died in 2012 and his will stated that, in order to inherit, his adult children must attend his funeral and become Catholic within three months of his death.
His children did attend the funeral, but remain active Jehovah’s Witnesses.
In the New South Wales Supreme Court earlier this month, Justice Francois Junc ruled Mr Carroll was entitled to have these conditions in his will.
The court heard that Mr Carroll never approved of his children becoming Jehovah’s Witness.
His will was not so much about his own beliefs, but was rather about his long standing objection to his children being Jehovah’s Witnesses.
He did not raise them as Catholics, and neither he nor they had attended church services when they were young and he did not enrol them in Catholic schools.
But when he split from their mother in 1959, she became a Jehovah’s Witness and over the next decade the couple’s four children, Robyn, Paulene, Anthony and Susan, were baptised as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
His will was written four months before he died, in late 2011.
It was challenged on the basis that its stipulations were uncertain, but Justice Junc rejected this.
The requirements, especially the one that the children be baptised into the Catholic Church, were “not uncertain”, the judge ruled.
Mr Carroll’s children also argued that the conditions he set were legally impossible and contrary to public policy.
But these grounds also failed.
If the four children had met the stipulated conditions in the will, they would have inherited just over one third of Mr Carroll’s estate.
But Justice Junc ordered that this share be divided among the 13 other beneficiaries of Mr Carroll’s will, in accordance with its specific instructions.
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