Cancer Council Victoria has asked the supreme court to compel the beneficiaries of a deceased woman’s $12.6m estate to hand over her medical records so that the organisation can determine if it has a right to her fortune.
In an affidavit provided to the court, the head of fundraising and communications for the council, Andrew Buchanan, described how the council received a phone call last October from the nephews and nieces of Elizabeth Thomson.
They told the organisation that it was possible a large bequest was coming to the organisation from Thomson, but that the matter was “complex”.
Thomson died in May aged 94 with pneumonia and dementia due to Alzheimer’s named as the causes of her death. In her will, made in 2011, Thomson bequeathed $500 each to the RSPCA and William Angliss hospital. The rest of her fortune she left to two individuals, Victoria Anne Wilshire and Peter Gordon Jeffs.
In an affidavit, Jeffs’s wife, Vera Jeffs, said she and her husband travelled to Melbourne to care for Thomson in 2011. While caring for her, Jeffs said Thomson told her she wanted to make the will.
“Elizabeth told me to go to the post office and purchase a will kit,” Jeffs said. “Elizabeth told me that she wanted to leave money to the RSPCA and to William Angliss hospital, where her husband Ken was. She told me she wanted to leave the rest of the estate to the plaintiff [Wilshire] and my husband.”
It also made Wilshire the executor of the will instead of her solicitor.
The court heard the will differed significantly to Thomson’s previous will, made in 2004. In that will, Thomson said she wanted to bequeath her multimillion-dollar estate to her husband, and if he died before her, she wanted to leave the entirety of her estate to Cancer Council Victoria.
In November 2011 Thomson was admitted to an aged care home with a diagnosis of dementia, glaucoma and visual impairment, which Buchanan said raised questions about her capacity to have made the second will.
A nephew of Thomson’s, William Jeffs, gave solicitors for the Cancer Council a copy of an occupational health and safety home assessment summary from 2010. The summary described how Thomson “required prompting and redirection when preparing sandwiches during the assessment” and “had short-term memory problems rendering her unable to consistently use her four wheel walking frame and constant supervision of her was recommended”.
But requests from the Cancer Council for access to all Thomson’s medical records, including from her GP, Medicare and various health services providers, had been refused by Wilshire and her solicitor.
Buchanan said he believed the documents would help the Cancer Council to determine if it had a case for challenging the will and arguing Thomson lacked the testamentary capacity to execute it. If she did lack the capacity, the Cancer Council would argue her original will should stand.
He asked the court to compel Wilshire to provide the council with the documents.
The case will be heard on 11 November.
