Lost Wills & Copies

The funeral is over, the family knows a will existed — and the original is nowhere. Irish law meets that moment with a presumption and a path: a will last held by the testator and missing at death is presumed destroyed by them intending revocation — rebuttably — and where the presumption falls and the contents are proved, a copy can carry the estate. These cases are search, evidence and sequence; here is all three.

The Presumption and Its Edges

The presumption’s foundation is possession: it bites where the testator themselves last held the original — and weakens fundamentally where a solicitor or third party did (firms hold originals in safe custody for decades, and the trail through closed and merged practices is followable). Rebuttal is the whole picture: continued statements of the will’s existence and terms; circumstances explaining loss without revocation — the move, the flood, the chaotic papers; the sheer implausibility of secret revocation against everything else said and done. And a sharp boundary: the will someone has but won’t produce is not lost — the subpoena to lodge testamentary documents and the citation machinery compel production, and sitting on a will confers nothing but exposure.

The Work: Search, Record, Fallbacks

Search systematically and document the search — the deceased’s papers, every solicitor they ever used, safe-custody services, the entrusted friends — because the search record is itself evidence, and its thoroughness carries weight in any application to prove a copy. Prove the contents — the copy, the draft, the drafting file, the recollections. And run the fallback map from day one: the copy admitted, the earlier will resurrected, or intestacy — three scenarios whose different beneficiaries shape strategy and candour alike. Where the disappearance has sharper edges — the will “lost” while in interested hands — the wider contest toolkit stands behind the lost-will machinery.

Sequence Beats Panic

No grant should issue on assumptions while the document question is open — a caveat preserves the position in days; the search and evidence assembly take their weeks properly; the proof application (or the fallback administration) follows on what the work actually finds. One conversation sets the sequence: what existed, who last held it, where the search stands, and which of the three scenarios the evidence currently favours — the practice treatment is at invalid & lost wills.