In an unusual case, the High Court has ruled that a will a man had written on two pieces of cardboard should be admitted to probate.

The will, which the man had made the day before his tragic death by suicide, left his house and most of its contents to a charity. It had been written on the backs of two pieces of cardboard cut from food packaging. The pages were numbered and the second page was signed and dated. After writing the will, the man had visited the house of a couple he knew and asked them to sign it.

The charity asked the Court to pronounce in favour of the will. Members of the man's family who would share in his estate if he were found to have died intestate agreed with the claim.

The Court found that the document was clearly intended to be the man's last will: it contained dispositions of property intended to take effect on his death, and he had described it to the witnesses as a will.

The witnesses were clear that the man had already signed the second page before presenting it to them to be witnessed. However, the Court found that the manner in which he had presented it to them – describing it as a will and stating that he needed two witnesses to his signature – amounted to acknowledgement of his signature, sufficient to satisfy the requirements of Section 9(1)(c) of the Wills Act 1837.

The law requires that, where there are other pages of a will that are not connected to the attestation page, the other pages must be in the same room and under the testator's control when the will is executed. Although the witnesses had not seen the first page of the will, the law presumed that it was in the room at the time of attestation, and it seemed to the Court extremely likely that the two pages were written at the same time and taken together to the witnesses' home.

The Court concluded that the two pages should be admitted to probate as the man's last will.