BC SPCA should receive $1.4 million from Vancouver woman's estate, court rules

A B.C. Supreme Court justice has decided that the BC SPCA should receive roughly $1.4 million left to it in the will of a 99-year-old Vancouver woman who died in 2017, despite a handwritten note that would have reduced the animal welfare society's share to just $100,000. (B.C. Supreme Court)

Vancouver -

A B.C. Supreme Court justice has decided that the BC SPCA should receive roughly $1.4 million left to it in the will of a 99-year-old Vancouver woman who died in 2017, despite a handwritten note that would have reduced the animal welfare society's share to just $100,000.

In a lengthy decision issued last week, Justice Heather MacNaughton determined that the note - which was found in a lockbox in Eleena Violette Murray's Kitsilano home after her death in October 2017 - does not reflect Murray's "final and fixed intention" to change her will. 

A group of family members filed a lawsuit arguing that the note represented a change to Murray's will and that she had not been fully aware of or approved the gift to the SPCA in her last formal will, which was written and notarized in 2013.

That 2013 will listed gifts of specific dollar amounts to various family members and left the "rest and residue" of Murrary's assets to the SPCA.

Murray had no children, and her husband died in 2002. The gifts in her 2013 will were listed in increments of $60,000 and $40,000 and directed mostly to nieces and nephews. The total amount of the gifts was $440,000, with the remainder of the value of her estate left to the SPCA.

When the will was written in 2013, Murray's home on Collingwood Street was valued at just over $1 million, and the SPCA would have expected to receive roughly $760,000 of Murray's approximately $1.2 million in assets had she died that year, according to MacNaughton's decision.

Instead, by the time Murray died in 2017, her house had increased in value. When it was sold in 2020, as part of the execution of her will, it went for $1.9 million.

The note would have limited the SPCA's gift to just $100,000, while increasing the payments to some of the family members named in the will, removing others and adding a payment of $40,000 to Murray's friend John Basich.

Because the specific gifts in the note did not exhaust the value of Murray's estate, the rest of the money - had MacNaughton deemed the note valid - would have gone in four equal shares to Murray's four closest living relatives, according to the decision.

MacNaughton lists several factors supporting the notion that the note was, indeed, Murray's final intention, including that it was left in the lockbox alongside the 2013 will, it lists all 10 beneficiaries from the will in almost exactly the same order, and that she had repeatedly told Basich that she had left him something in her will.

The justice also acknowledges that the changes in the note are "rational and consistent."

"Given Ms. Murray’s friendship with Mr. Basich, her addition of a gift to him is understandable," MacNaughton writes. "The increased amounts are also proportionate to the increase in the approximate value of her assets."

Despite this, MacNaughton offers an even lengthier list of reasons why the note does not represent Murray's final intentions.

Among those reasons is the fact that the note has no title or date on it, and Murray did not sign it or have it notarized or witnessed.

"The note lacks all of the hallmarks of formal validity," MacNaughton writes in her decision.

The justice also references that some of the names on the note do not have a monetary gift assigned, and that another note with similar information on it was found in Murray's kitchen and thrown out.

"The existence of several notes, with similar writing, suggests an ongoing thought process rather than a final testamentary intent," MacNaughton writes.

She also notes that Murray had finalized a previous will with a lawyer in 2010 and replaced it in 2013 by going to a notary.

"Ms. Murray’s pattern of behaviour was to see a legal professional in order to change a will," MacNaughton writes. "Ms. Murray understood the formal process of attending at a professional’s office and going through the process of instructing the professional and formally executing a valid will."

For those reasons, and others, MacNaughton decided to uphold the 2013 will, meaning that the SPCA will receive approximately $1.4 million from Murray's estate.

According to the decision, the SPCA has instructed its lawyer to honour the $40,000 gift to Basich from the note.

"He is the only potential beneficiary excluded from the 2013 will when the two documents at issue in this proceeding are compared," MacNaughton writes.