The following is a brief extract from Chapter 5 – ‘Litigation’, of my forthcoming 400 page book – the 2nd Edition of the ‘Contentious Probate Handbook’. I am currently on schedule to complete the drafting of Chapter 5 for submission to my editor in 3 days time. I will then have completed the first draft of around 1/3rd of the book. I am on schedule to complete the book before my Birthday on 22 July:

5.3.5 Evidence

The general rules of evidence apply in probate claims subject to special rules about:
       (a)      admissibility; and
       (b)      the evidence required to prove particular matters, i.e. due execution, revocation, testamentary capacity, knowledge and approval, undue influence and fraud. …

In a contentious probate case, the guiding principle is that a witness should give evidence in his or her own words on issues in the case in relation to which his evidence is likely to assist the court, and nothing else. See also paragrapah 5.8.6 – ‘Reality-Testing’, below. …

‘Recent authorities about how a judge should approach the finding of a fact are: The statement of Legatt J (as he then was) in the commercial case of Gestmin v. Credit Suisse [2013] EWHC 3560 (Comm) … that ‘the best approach for a judge to adopt in the trial of a commercial case is, in my view, the place little if any reliance at all on witnesses’ recollections of what was said in meetings and conversations and to base factual findings on inferences drawn from the documentary evidence and known or probable facts’ has attracted criticism: see CXB v. North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust [2019] EWHC 2053 (QB) at [3] – [10] approved by the Court of Appeal in Kogan V Martin [2019] EWCA Civ 1645. In the latter case, Floyd LJ stated at [88] that ‘a proper awareness of the fallibility of memory does not relieve judges of the task of making findings of fact based upon all the evidence.’ …
(Tristram And Coote’s Propbate Practice. Thirty-Second Edition (2020), by PR D’Costa, P Teverson and T Synak, Lexis Nexis, Paragrpah 39.18, Footnote 3). …

Where, as is often the case, facts relating to the making and execution of a will are solely in the knowledge of one party, e.g. where a testator drafted a home-made will under the terms of which he gifted assets to a person who was living with him, then the making of an application under CPR Part 18 for further information may be necessary. In which case, the author would argue that it is appropriate to make an interim application at an early stage in the proceedings, i.e. at or before the first CMC.

Part 7 probate claims are inherently fact-sensitive, often culminating in a decision being made about which of the parties’ conflicting accounts is more probable than not. … The credibility of the witnesses of fact and consequently the weight attached by the judge to their evidence, will often be a determinative factor in reaching an overall conclusion prior to judgment.