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Unsent text accepted as dead man's will by Australian court
- mstade 9y agoHow do they know the deceased man wrote the text, and not someone else?
- marksomnian 9y agoMy thoughts exactly. This seems incredibly iffy legally.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoIt's exactly the opposite, legally, having been ruled on by the Supreme Court :)
- _jal 9y agoAs the saying goes, they're not final because they're right, they're right because they're final.
- Verdex_3 9y agoThis is something I see people and especially technology people struggle with a lot. After you strip away all the flowery language, the legal system is just a way we keep people from trying to bloodily solve their own problems with violence. With this in mind, a final arbitrator makes a lot of sense. The point isn't to find out how the universe works, make a product that is economical viable and functioning, or determine absolute truth. The point is to keep people from killing each other in the fairest way possible. It also doesn't have to be consistent. That's why we have laws AND judges. Sometimes the law is wrong because of the context of the specific case. In the US we throw a lot of layers at the problem to try to avoid human tyranny, but at the end of the day human tyranny is preferable to the tyranny of an ambiguously written law.
- KekDemaga 9y agoI wonder if you'd feel the same if you got pulled over and had a few thousand in cash taken by police under the assumption that it was involved in a crime without any recourse. I suspect you'd prefer the literal interpretation of the constitution in that case.
- jimmywanger 9y agoIt's funny how quickly you turn from a strict Constitutionalist to an activist judge based on your political views. For instance, most left-leaning people probably think that in the civilian forfeiture rule, the judges should take a strict constructional interpretation of the constitution and forbid it. However, when it comes to striking down immigration bans based on an economic argument[1], all of a sudden you want an activist judge. I'm not saying I care either way, but I care about consistency. I think we are based on a common law system, and once an economic argument is successfully made it can be make at any time. If we're ok with that, we should be ok with civil forfeiture. [1] The state says the ban would harm its tourism industry and the ability to recruit foreign students and workers.
- _jal 9y agoThe point being made is that the choice isn't between 'strict constitutionalism' and loosey-goosey-legalism, it is between loosey-goosey-legalism and feudal warlordism. I realize a disturbing number of techies are actually attracted to that (even if they think it will turn out differently), but I think most of the US populace thankfully isn't. The theory is that there's a social analogue of Gödel's theorem, the humans are incapable of defining a formal set of rules for governing themselves that provides non-absurd outcomes in all cases. I believe this, but of course we don't have solvers for human reasoning (otherwise we could test the theory). So sure, I absolutely agree with you that civil forfeiture is just a new name for highway robbery by the King's men. But for literalist constitutionalism to be viable, it has to handle hard cases as well as simple ones in zero-and negative-sum games, and the US Constitution (any document) leaves huge areas of potential conflict undefined. So your choice reduces to either it won't work with real humans, or you have to interpret it. To interpret it means designating someone (or some people) as official interpreters. And at some point, you find yourself back where we started, arguing about the interpretation of justices who are right because they are final.
- morley 9y agoIt seems like they decided based on the context of the case: > In the message, the man gave details of how to access his bank account and where he had hidden money in his house.
- sametmax 9y agoOk, i stole the bank details of grandpa. Let's craft his will by fake sending a text.
- imron 9y agoDon't know why you're getting downvoted. In terms of bizarre things family members have done to inherit things, this sort of escapade probably wouldn't even breach the top 100.
- KekDemaga 9y agoDrug addiction + elderly family members is a terrible combination.
- AstralStorm 9y agoWant to prevent it? Write a real will as opposed to nothing.
- sametmax 9y agoAnd make sure it gets official as you die, either by being public or handed to a 3rd party.
- KGIII 9y agoMultiple notarized copies, just to ensure it hasn't been altered. If you do alter it, again make sure there are multiple copies and that it contains verbiage that it supersedes the previous document Not a lawyer, not legal advice, you know the drill. However, the above is from my lawyer and is the policy I follow. He witnesses it AND it is notarized by a third party.
- pjc50 9y agoMore to the point, what about the witness requirements? I'm fairly sure an unwitnessed unsent letter wouldn't meet that requirement. But can we have a link to the actual ruling to reduce speculation please?
- ranko 9y agoIn some places, an unwitnessed handwritten will is in fact recognised: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_will
- jaclaz 9y agoIn most non-common Law countries I believe, one of the three requisites however (at least in Italy, France and Spain) is that is should be (besides handwritten and signed) also dated "exactly" (day/month/year). A not-so-uncommon issue with holographic wills is that multiple versions may exist, in which case only the last one (date) is valid. Also, parts of a holographic will may be nullified if contrary to Law provisions, such as - an example - violations to the reserve share.
- alexc05 9y agoHow do we know he didn't leave it unsent because he was still unsure if he wanted to commit to that course of action? I write "drafts" of things and leave them unsent from time to time. After a cooling off period I decide that I don't actually feel that way or think better of it. Unsent to me is a really bold line to cross. Email / draft form stuff is a scratchpad for developing how you feel and working out your thoughts.
- rando444 9y agoWhich is why there are courts to decide these things. In this case the guy wrote this very close to the time he took his own life, and the wording does signal that he intended this to be his will and last wishes. If I were a judge I would have decided the same. Killing himself was a pretty clear signal that he was done trying to work out his thoughts.
- bagacrap 9y agoWhy not press send then?
- rando444 9y agoAny answer is speculation. My guess would be that he knew that sending an SMS will to his brother would cause his brother to reach out to him.. a conversation he'd rather just avoid since he seems like his mind was made up.
- astura 9y agoMy guess - The message might not have sent due to bad signal. He may have written the message days before when he was feeling suicidal but didn't send to not alert the family. Later on he killed himself impulsively. Anywhere from one-third to 80% of all suicide attempts are impulsive acts, according to The New England Journal of Medicine. 24% of those who made near-lethal suicide attempts decided to kill themselves less than five minutes before the attempt, and 70% made the decision within an hour of the attempt. [1]. [1]http://www.businessinsider.com/many-suicides-are-based-on-an-impulsive-decision-2014-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/many-suicides-are-based-on-an...
- mef 9y agohttps://archive.sclqld.org.au/qjudgment/2017/QSC17-220.pdf https://archive.sclqld.org.au/qjudgment/2017/QSC17-220.pdf
- lytfyre 9y agoAlong similar lines, there's a famous Canadian case where a farmer scratched a will into the fender of his tractor when got trapped under it - http://news.usask.ca/archived_ocn/09-jan-23/see_what_we_found.php http://news.usask.ca/archived_ocn/09-jan-23/see_what_we_foun...
- davidu 9y agoI better clean up my drafts folder. I have lots of unsent messages that I wrote in impulsive moods, but had the wherewithal not to send. And in most cases, fortunately never sent.
- astura 9y agoWhy not just encrypt your phone? Unless you give someone else (spouse?) unfettered access to it, I guess. They you'd already trust him or her.
- r00fus 9y agoCan you trust that your phone won't be unlocked by court order? Apple does accede to lawful court requests.
- Canada 9y agoBecause if it's encrypted then even Apple can't unlock it
- netsharc 9y agoBut they cam write and deploy a version of iOS which will not respect the "wipe the phone" command after 10 false password tries, making brute-forcing viable (it also helped that it was obvious the phone just needed a 4-digit number to unlock). Luckily they refused to do that and won in court.
- recursive 9y agoCan the OS be updated without unlocking?
- netsharc 9y agoI... believe so? Speaking from experience with older models: You can hold a combination of the keys to go into https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/DFU_Mode https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/DFU_Mode, and if you plug the device to your computer, you can reflash the OS. The phone would have multiple partitions, so it would only flash the OS partition with the new version of the OS, and leave the (encrypted) data partition alone.
- 201709User 9y agoCourt denying wife money is quite an unusual outcome.
- jlebrech 9y agothis will give some nasty people ideas whether or not this case was legit.
- dogruck 9y agoI side with the Australian court in this instance (based on the article). I would disagree if he already had an established will, and the court decided to supersede it by substituting the unsent text. But, isn't the unsent text preferable to nothing? Seems like the unsent text is the superior to nothing.
- legohead 9y agoBut he's also married... And the article doesn't say, but what if he had children? I'm sure we can all relate to writing a post/message and then deciding it was wrong and not following through. An interesting case for sure.
- dogruck 9y agoIs there a chance that the unsent text does not reflect his wishes? Absolutely. But, is it more likely that his true wishes are closer to nothing?
- luckydude 9y agoMe too. The article I read (linked off reddit, prolly the same one) said there were details like banking information etc that it was likely only the dead man had. So it seems like the law took a healthy look at it and came to the right conclusion.
- ringaroundthetx 9y agopragmatically, the wife is obligated to disagree with that. sorry things turned out that way for her and him.
- aaron695 9y agoNote it won't override the wife's access to what's hers. He doesn't have a 'his bank account' in that x% of that is his wifes and the same with the hidden money etc (baring a prenups) Also it was not considered a draft/unsent legally. The judge considered it purely a medium to get a final will to his family without them learning of his plans. "I find that having the mobile phone with him at the place he took his life so it was found with him and not sending the message, is consistent with the fact that he did not want to alert his brother to the fact that he was about to commit suicide, but did intend the text message to be discovered when he was found."