A deathbed change to a Coquitlam woman's longstanding will means her common-law spouse is looking for a new place to live.
In a decision issued in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster on Jan. 8, Justice Jan Brongers said Mark Benson has no claim to the Coquitlam home he’d shared with Maureen Fleury since 2015.
Fleury, 73, was dying of cancer when she was admitted to Eagle Ridge Hospital in October 2023.
After a brief return to her home, Fleury returned to the hospital on Nov. 5 and the following day summoned her lawyer to make changes to the will she had originally prepared in 2007, long before her relationship with Benson.
With Fleury’s sister — Sheila Parker — who was visiting from Ontario at her side, she revised to her will to include a $25,000 gift to Benson, as well as a provision he could continue to live in the house the couple shared with her two youngest children, Shawn and Jonathan Fleury, for five years. He also had to look after her cats and pay the costs of maintaining the house.
A draft of the new will was sent to Maureen Fleury and Parker by her lawyer on Nov. 16.
But two days later, Shawn Fleury told Parker he didn’t want to live with Benson. According to court documents, he said, “he had only tolerated Mr. Benson because of his mother’s relationship” with him. He also said he feared Benson might try to evict his brother, Jonathan.
Parker encouraged Shawn to raise his concerns with his mother directly.
He did, and two days later Maureen Fleury told Parker she wanted to make another change to her will, increasing Benson’s gift to $50,000 but removing the provision he be allowed to continue residing in the house for five years.
Instead, Shawn Fleury would assume ownership of the house with the option to buy out his brother and the share owned by another brother, Brendan, who lived elsewhere.
Subsequent phone calls involving Maureen Fleury, her sister and her lawyer conveyed the desired changes. But before they could be confirmed in writing or verbal instructions, Maureen Fleury’s condition worsened and on Nov. 30, she died.
Benson then moved out of the house, citing “certain unspecified threats made against him by Brendan Fleury.”
On Aug. 2, 2024, Benson filed an opposition to provisions of Maureen Fleury’s original will and its subsequent revisions. He claimed the 2007 will was no longer in effect because his late spouse had a “deliberate or fixed intention” to change it. He also said the later drafts weren’t valid because they hadn’t been signed and were made at a time she was already in ill health.
In fact, said Benson, Maureen Fleury may have died without leaving a will at all.
Under British Columbia’s Wills, Estates and Succession Act, that would entitle him to the first $150,000 of Maureen Fleury’s estate with the remainder divided between him and her three sons.
But in his ruling, Brongers said while Maureen Fleury is no longer around to corroborate her intentions, her close relationship with her sister and the fact Sheila Parker had nothing to gain from any of the wills other than personal, domestic, household and ornamental items bolstered the credibility of her assertions about her late sister’s intentions.
“Accordingly, I am satisfied on a balance of probabilities that Ms. Parker’s two affidavits provide credible and reliable evidence of Ms. Fleury’s testamentary intentions during the month of November 2023,” Brongers said in his ruling.
As a result, Brongers found Maureen Fleury had indeed revoked her original will from 2007 and it was no longer effective. Further, he said, the first draft of the revised will didn’t reflect her final intentions so it too was no longer effective.
Instead, Brongers said, the second revision is valid and he ordered Maureen Fleury’s estate to be distributed as she’d finally intended.
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