Since the Statute of Wills in the time of Henry VIII, no will has been valid if made by a “person of non-sane memory.”1 Competency to execute a will does not exist unless the alleged testator has reason and understanding sufficient to comprehend such an act of testation.2 As the court said in the Marquis of Winchester case, “…it is not sufficient that testator be of memory when he makes his will, to answer familiar and usual questions; but he ought to have a disposing memory, so that he is able to make a disposition of his lands with understanding and reason, and that is such a memory which the law calls sound and perfect memory.”3
That sound mind and perfect memory competent to dispose of his property thus evolved into…”having that degree of recollection about him that would enable him to look about the property he had to dispose of, and the persons to whom he wished to dispose of it; if he had the power of summoning up in his mind so as to know what his property was, and those persons were, that then were the objects of his bounty, then he was competent to make his will.”4
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