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Matthew Vella
Bahrija landowner Generoso Sammut, one of the shareholders in Eliza Company Ltd, had attempted to defraud his own sister of the inheritance of their aunt by fabricating a secret will that had him as heir to a woman who actually feared him.
In a recent sentence, the Court of Appeal dismissed as frivolous and vexatious an appeal by Sammut after the First Hall of the Civil Court declared the secret will inauthentic and void.
Sammut had in fact fabricated a secret will back in November 1996, when he took a person to the office of Notary Antoine Aguis, who identified this person from her identity card as Concetta Sammut, Generoso’s aunt.
The ‘new’ will had been brief – two simple articles ordered the cancellation of Concetta’s previous will, drawn up in 1995, and bequeathed all her belongings to one person, her nephew Generoso Sammut.
A day after Concetta died in January 1997, Sammut filed a court application for Concetta’s inheritance to be disclosed and to safeguard his claims for having rendered services to the woman.
Suspecting foul play, his sister Mary Abela and her husband Joseph filed a report with the police.
Sammut had in fact previously told them that the family would lose their aunt’s inheritance because she was going to leave everything to the Church, often asking his sister Mary for his aunt’s identity card to draw up a new will.
The police investigations consequently revealed that the signature of Concetta Sammut on the secret will was not genuine, and the Abelas filed a writ against Generoso Sammut and against the director of the Public Registry.
In fact, Concetta Sammut had already had a will done back in 1995, leaving as her heirs Joseph and Mary Abela, who took care of the woman who also slept at their house, and certain Catholic charitable institutions, for which she had already informed Dar tal-Provvidenza’s Mgr Victor Grech of her intentions a month before her death.
The Abelas even claimed that Concetta Sammut not only refused to speak to her nephew Generoso, but even feared him.
His sister Mary said Generoso would ask her whether their aunt had drawn up her will. “He believed he was coaxing me into turning against her by saying that she was going to leave everything to the poor and nothing for us… He started asking me for her identity card and when I asked him why he told me he wanted to make a will in her name. He used to tell me of a good lawyer and a notary friend of his who would be able to take all her wealth with a stroke of a pen.”
The First Hall found serious discrepancies in Sammut’s version of events: he claimed he knew nothing of the secret will, or that he had been his aunt’s heir, and that he got to know of the secret will three moths after her death, when the will was published.
However, Sammut himself had filed a court application for Concetta’s inheritance to be disclosed and to safeguard his claims for having rendered services to the woman a day after her death. But when he was asked by the Court whether he had ever actually taken care of his aunt, Generoso answered no, with the Court declaring that this discrepancy had lost him all credibility and ruling in favour of the Abelas.
The Court of Appeal, presided over by Chief Justice Vincent DeGaetano, Mr Justice Anton Depasquale and Mr Justice Albert J Magri, fully affirmed the conclusions reached by the First Court, declaring Sammut’s appeal to be totally frivolous and vexatious and ordered him to disburse double cost for his appeal.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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