Online lover willed $2.5 million by Australian man doesn’t exist, court docket guidelines | USAEMALL.com

The online lover of an Australian man was left more than $2.5 million after his death until a court ruled the lover “does not exist”.

Questions around the true identity of the online lover were brought to the Supreme Court of Victoria last year for judicial advice on how to proceed with executing the will.

In a judgment handed down last month, Associate Justice Caroline Goulden said she was satisfied the online lover was not a real person and that a person or persons had been communicating with the deceased man using an assumed identity.

The case centred around the death of William Southey in October 2022 that named Kyle Stuart Jackson as executor and key beneficiary of his estate.

If Mr Jackson was unable or unwilling to execute the will or died before Mr Southey, the responsibility and benefit was to fall to his ex-wife as per the terms of the will.

The court was told Mr Southey and his ex-wife had been married between 1976 and 1989 and remained close friends following their separation and Mr Southey’s subsequent four-decade relationship with a man named Phillip Seymour.

Following Mr Seymour’s death in 2017, Mr Southey had a number of successive online relationships, the final of which was with Mr Jackson from early 2022.

“The deceased made his will in contemplation of his possible marriage to Mr Jackson, albeit he did not ever meet him in person,” Associate Justice Goulden wrote in her judgment.

The court was told between October 2022 and December 2023, a person purporting to be Mr Jackson was in contact with lawyers acting for Mr Southey and his ex-wife.

At first, he asked to be excused from being a beneficiary, saying “I don’t want it, I don’t deserve it”.

But months later the person purporting to be Mr Jackson asked for the ex-wife to execute the will with the “caveat” he receive 15 per cent.

“My relationship with William was special and I am yet to recover from his demise, his memory will forever linger and I will live the rest of my life inspired by his genuine love and kindness. He was a good man, filled with love,” he wrote.

The man purporting to be Mr Jackson repeatedly refused to communicate over a video call.

He sent an image of a passport in the name of Kyle Jackson, later determined to be fraudulent, and an address in Pennsylvania, where residents later said no one named Kyle Jackson lived.

Lawyers later hired a private investigator in the United States to track down Kyle Jackson, with a report from the investigator finding no record of his birth and concluding he did not exist.

In her judgment, Associate Justice Goulden said she was satisfied Kyle Stuart Jackson “does not exist in the manner understood by the deceased, or at all”.

“I accept that the plaintiff has undertaken necessary and proper investigations to verify Mr Jackson’s identity, and that there are no other practicable, or useful, searches or attempts that could be made that are likely to reveal any further information,” she wrote.

“Clearly a person or persons have been using that identity to engage with the deceased using the ‘oneluckysoull’ email address and the contact phone numbers in the deceased’s possession.

“But the identity that has been used is not a real one; it does not belong to any real person. This means that the beneficiary to whom the deceased intended to bequeath his testamentary gift does not exist.”

Associate Justice Goulden found the remainder of Mr Southey’s estate should be distributed to his ex-wife.