1.   Introduction

1.2    Requisites of a Will
Requisites of a Will are that it should be signed by the testator, witnessed and dated. A codicil must be executed and witnessed in the same manner precisely as a Will. No Will has any effect until it has been proved. Probate of a Will may be granted by a court or tribunal upon the application of an interested person in accordance with the provisions of the relevant laws.

Sir Abbas Effendi died in Haifa, in Palestine on November 28, 1921. Sir Abbas Effendi left a Will and Testament, in which he supplanted his half-brother Mirza Muhammad Ali, his successor-in-office under Baha’s Will and Testament, in favour of his own grandson Shoghi Effendi, whom Sir Abbas Effendi designated as the Guardian of the Cause.

Without going into the question whether Sir Abbas Effendi’s Will fulfils the requisites of a Will, no application was made by Shoghi Effendi to a court or a Moslem ecclesiastical tribunal for grant of probate. Likewise no proceeding were initiated by Mirza Muhammad Ali for discovery on the grounds that Sir Abbas Effendi’s Will was ultra vires of Baha’s Will. Neither party was willing to come forward and contest the validity or otherwise of Sir Abbas Effendi’s Will before a court or tribunal, as such a course was found to drag in Baha’s Will, with his pretensions to divinity with unfavourable consequences to both partisan pretensions which both parties meticulously sought to keep under carpet, as Bahaism was an exportable commodity and not for home consumption.

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