The Will included the following provision about children: “For the purposes of this Will, a child or children of a person named in this Will shall mean the biological and legally adopted children of such person.”
Was this definition intended to define who counted as children of the testator (i.e., the foster child was not included)? Or, was it intended to define who was a child of persons otherwise named in the Will, not the testator?
The court found that the latter interpretation was the right one. The phrase “child or children of a person named in this Will” was written in the third person and was inconsistent with the use of first personlanguage used in other places throughout the Will when the testator referred to herself. Thus, the definition did not govern whether a foster child was one of the testator’s children.
The court went on to consider extrinsic evidence
Source: Children are Children, Right? | Bennett Jones LLP – JDSupra
