By Yun Suh-young
Even if a hand-written will has the name, date, and signature of the deceased, it is invalid without the address, the Constitutional Court said Sunday.
It ruled that the civil law article requiring a will to include an address does not violate an individuals’ right to freely write a will. The decision dismissed petitions by two individuals who claimed that the civil law provision “excessively restricts the constitutional right to write a will.”
The two individuals petitioned separately after they were both rejected by the court from receiving an inheritance because both fathers failed to include the address on their respective wills.
The civil law provision stipulates that a handwritten will must contain the full text of the deceased’s wish, the date, address, name, and signature of the decedent.
The court in its ruling said that there is a “need to follow the strict form in the case of a will given the high risk of forging or falsification because no witness or a third party interferes in the process.”
The nine-member court said decedents can more carefully and accurately express their intent through writing the address. “Although the name can verify the identity of the decedent, if there is a person with the same name, the address is the way to verify their personal information,” it said.
Dissenting four justices, however, claimed that there was no need to have the address on the will because it was possible to identify the identity of the writer simply with the content.