Devan Ramachandran, J.

The very appellation ‘Will’ suggests that the document should effect that which the testator would have done; it is his will, his intention to pass his personal and real property in the particular manner outlined in the testamentary document. The foundational testamentary interpretation relating to Wills and Codicils remain the specific intent expressed in the plain language of the Will.

2. The accurate determination of a testator’s donative intent is the true province of the courts while disputes relating to such testamentary documents are raised. How should a court go about determining the testator’s intention? After all courts have nothing more than the words in the document itself because the testator, by definition, is not available to testify as to his intent couched in the language of his Will.

3. Determining a testator’s intent has long served the hypostasis of the common law of testamentary interpretation. In his seminal analysis of the history of English Common Law, Blacksmith noted that court’s collective focus on a testator’s intent stems from the very foundation of the Anglo-American System of Private Property.

4. The cardinal rules that apply to the interpretation and assessment of Wills have been often spoken to by the Hon’ble Supreme Court many times in the past and the locus classicus in this area is the judgment in Gnambal Ammal v. T. Raju Ayyar and others, AIR 1951 SC 103 where the Hon’ble Court in paragraph 10 spoke as under:

“The cardinal maxim to be observed by Court in constructing a will is to endeavour to ascertain the intentions of the testator. This intention has to be gathered primarily from the language of the document which is to be read as a whole without indulging in any conjecture or speculation as to what the testator would have done if he had been better informed or better advised. ….... The Courts are entitled and bound to bear in mind other matters than merely the words used. They must consider the surrounding circumstances, the position of the testator, his family relationship, the probability that he would use words in a particular sense, and many other things which are often summed up in the somewhat picturesque figure. ‘The Court is entitled to put itself into the testator’s armchair’ ….. But all this is solely as an aid to arriving at a right construction of the will, and to ascertain the meaning of its language when used by that particular testator in that document. So soon as the construction is settled, the duty of the Court is to carry out the intentions as expressed, and none other. The Court is in no case justified in adding to testamentary dispositions. …. In all cases it must loyally carry out the will as properly construed, and this duty is universal, and is true alike of wills of every nationality and every religion or rank of life.”

Subsequently, in Pearey Lal v. Rameshwar Das, AIR 1963 SC 1703 the Hon’ble Supreme Court has lucidly declared the law as under:

“.............. in constructing a will the Court should try its best to get at the intention of the testator by reading the will as a whole. We must accept, if possible, such construction as would give to every expression some effect rather than that which would render any of the expressions inoperative. Another rule which may also be useful in the context of the present will is that the words occurring more than once in a will shall be presumed to be used always in the same sense unless a contrary intention appears from the will; see Section 86 of the Indian Succession Act. So too, all parts of a will should be construed in relation to each other; vice Section 84 of the said Act. It is also a well recognized rule of construction that the Court will look at the circumstances under which the testator makes his will such as the state of his property, of his family and the like : see Section 75 of the said Act.”

It is thus now settled that it is the intention of the testator which should be the sole