New Delhi: Noting that a person is legally entitled to dispose of his property as per his wish, the Supreme Court has ruled that a will cannot be invalidated merely on the ground that a share has been refused to be given to the legal heirs, reports Amit Anand Chaudhary.A bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Vijay Bishnoi said exclusion of natural heirs from a property cannot in itself be considered a suspicious circumstance and dismissed a plea by a chartered accountant’s wife and children challenging the validity of his will.The Supreme Court held that unless the exclusion of legal heirs is accompanied by doubtful circumstances affecting the genuineness or execution of the will, the mere exclusion does not invalidate the will. It said that the will in question clearly specified that the testator had not done any injustice to his wife, children or other relatives and that he had given them a lot.In the will made in 1983, CA bequeathed all the scheduled properties in favor of his only sister. He died just six months later and then a legal battle started between the family members which lasted for 43 years and was finally decided by the apex court.“The contention of the Appellants (wife, children) is that they, being the natural heirs of the testator, have been completely excluded without any reason and such exclusion creates a suspicious circumstance surrounding the execution of the Will, which is legally untenable. It is well settled that mere disenfranchisement of natural heirs, in itself, cannot be a suspicious circumstance as the whole idea behind the execution of the Will is to interfere with the normal line of succession.”CA’s will, the bench said, “was voluntarily executed by the testator of his own free will in a healthy state of mind and this has been proved through the testimony of one of the witnesses examined by the trial court. This witness clearly stated that the testator executed the will in his presence, and both he and the testator signed the will in the presence of each other.”