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Two women are contesting the validity of their late father’s will and the paternity of a woman who says she’s their half-sister, rather than their stepsister.
They want the will thrown out or amended to provide more of a share to each of them.
Steven Whitehouse died in 2023 in Quesnel and daughters Shy-Leigh Wells and Shaun Whitehouse are asking the B.C. Supreme Court to declare the will invalid because they don’t think he wrote it or even knew about it.
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They were each left $1,000 in the will, and the rest of Whitehouse’s estate is to go to Shayna Partington, who is also known as Shayna O’Flynn, the plaintiffs said in a lawsuit filed in court.
The will should be declared invalid based of “suspicious circumstances” around its preparation, their father’s questionable capacity to write it, or that it was prepared under coercion or through fraud, it said.
About four months after their father died, Partington “miraculously located a written copy of the will, allegedly in the lining of a suitcase,” it said.
The plaintiffs said their father never indicated to them he had a will.
The 2020 will was witnessed by Partington’s mother and her father-in-law, the lawsuit said.
Around the same time as Partington produced the will, she sent DNA reports to Shy-Leigh Wells and Shaun Whitehouse showing she was also their dad’s biological child.
Wells and Whitehouse contend those reports were altered and say in the lawsuit that the lab where the tests were done “confirmed the reports were altered.”
The plaintiffs said they also got a DNA report from Martin Lee Crowder, showing he is Partington’s father, according to the claim.
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The plaintiffs children also arranged for Partington to complete a DNA test but, after agreeing, she declined, the lawsuit said.
The claim said the value of the estate isn’t known. It also said the plaintiffs didn’t receive much money or assets from their dad during his lifetime, but that he had provided for Partington during his life.
The plaintiffs ask the court if it finds the will to be valid, it should be varied because “it does not make adequate provision for the proper maintenance and support” for them under the Wills, Estates and Succession Act, and he didn’t meet his moral obligation under the law to them.
“The highly unusual nature of the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the will” and what’s in it suggests he didn’t know about or approve it, and it “raises the doctrine of suspicious circumstances,” according to the claim.
“The fact that the defendant miraculously found the will which was witnessed by her mother and father-in-law and made minor provision for the plaintiffs and gave the rest of the estate to the defendant strongly” indicates their dad didn’t know about or approve it, it said.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.
A message left with the children’s lawyer wasn’t returned and the defendant could not be found.
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