Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Dispute over the validity of a 2024 Last Will that substantially altered prior estate distributions in favour of the testator’s spouse.
• Challenge to testamentary capacity based on serious medical conditions, recent surgeries, stroke, and narcotic pain management near the time of execution.
• Conflicting lay evidence on the testator’s cognitive state, with multiple witnesses affirming he remained alert, coherent, and aware of his wishes.
• Allegations of suspicious circumstances arising from a non-lawyer neighbour drafting the will, late notarization, and the will not being disclosed to the daughter before death.
• Claims of undue influence by the spouse, countered by evidence of a long-term, loving marriage and direct instructions from the testator about will contents.
• Application under Rule 75.06 dismissed for failure to meet the minimal evidentiary threshold to call the will’s validity into question, leaving the 2024 Will to stand.

Factual background of the family and competing wills
The case centres on the estate of Charles Laszlo, who died on January 29, 2025. At the time of his death, he left behind his wife of fifteen years, Ilona Maria Laszlo, and his adult daughter, Elizabeth Margrit Laszlo Cissek. Two grandsons, Jani and Chazz Fournier-Laszlo, are also central figures because they are residuary beneficiaries in an earlier will and specific legatees in the later will. The litigation arises from a stark change between two testamentary instruments: a 2020 Will prepared by a lawyer and a 2024 Last Will drafted by a neighbour shortly before Mr. Laszlo’s death.
Under the 2020 Will, chosen and arranged through a lawyer retained by Ms. Cissek, the estate plan was more balanced. The 2020 Will appointed Ms. Cissek as estate trustee. It granted Ms. Laszlo a right to reside in any property that Mr. Laszlo owned at his death, while the residue was divided into two equal parts: one share to Ms. Cissek and the other share to the two grandsons. Under this earlier planning, the daughter was central both as estate trustee and as a major residuary beneficiary, and she also held her father’s power of attorney prior to his death.
The 2024 Last Will, executed on December 19, 2024, dramatically shifted the estate’s distribution. It named the spouse, Ilona, as estate trustee and left essentially the whole estate to her, aside from two limited provisions: a Montana 5th Wheel travel trailer to the two grandsons and a $20 bequest to the applicant daughter. The 2024 Last Will expressly revoked the 2020 Will. The change from a shared residuary structure to a largely spousal-focused disposition is the foundation of the applicant’s suspicion and grievance.

Circumstances surrounding preparation and execution of the 2024 Last Will
A key factual feature is that the 2024 Last Will was not prepared by a lawyer. Instead, it was drafted by a friend and neighbour, Andrew Voros, who knew both Mr. and Ms. Laszlo and spoke both English and Hungarian. According to his evidence, Mr. and Ms. Laszlo asked him on December 18, 2024, to prepare wills for them and explained the terms they wanted included. He was uncomfortable because he is not a lawyer and initially suggested they see counsel. He nonetheless became involved after receiving a rudimentary will by text from Ms. Laszlo and then holding two video calls with Mr. Laszlo on December 18 to go through the text and proposed changes.
On December 19, 2024, the day the 2024 Last Will was executed, Mr. Voros and another long-time friend, Milenko Suvajdzin, attended at the hospital. The evidence is that Mr. Voros read the will aloud to Mr. Laszlo, in both Hungarian and English, and then confirmed with him that the document reflected his wishes. Mr. Suvajdzin says Mr. Laszlo was fully aware, understood why he was there, and responded affirmatively that the will expressed what he wanted. The will was signed by the testator in the presence of both witnesses. It was notarized only after Mr. Laszlo’s death, when it was taken to a lawyer’s office for storage and later used as the basis for an application for a certificate of appointment of estate trustee with a will.
The applicant pointed to the fact that a non-lawyer drafted the document, that there was no lawyer present at execution, that notarization was delayed until after death, and that the will was not disclosed to her while her father was alive. These facts, taken in isolation, formed part of her claim of suspicious circumstances, but the court examined them in light of fuller contextual evidence.

Medical condition, treatment, and disputes about capacity
By late 2024, Mr. Laszlo had a serious and complex medical history. He had been diagnosed with melanoma in 2022, suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in July 2024 followed by additional arrests and a twelve-day period on life support, and underwent significant vascular surgery on his femoral artery in November 2024. Shortly after that surgery, he experienced a stroke, requiring ambulance transport and hospital care. In mid-December 2024, he underwent two surgeries for a perforated bowel and had a colostomy. These procedures left him in significant pain, for which he received hydromorphone and other opioid medications. By the time the 2024 Last Will was executed on December 19, 2024, he had been referred to palliative care due to metastatic cancer and a poor overall prognosis.
The applicant relied heavily on this medical history, the nature of his surgeries, and the pain medication regimen to argue that he lacked testamentary capacity on December 19, 2024. She pointed to medical chart notes describing him as tired, nauseous, weak, and in pain, and she asserted in her affidavit that narcotic medications impair cognition and decision-making. However, she did not provide expert medical evidence linking the specific medications and dosages to an actual impairment of testamentary capacity at the relevant time. The medical records themselves did not contain clinical observations that he was confused, disoriented, or unable to understand his circumstances or decisions.
In contrast, several lay witnesses provided direct accounts of his cognitive state. Mr. Suvajdzin described him as fully aware on December 19, 2024, understanding who was present and what was happening when the will was read and signed. The grandsons, Jani and Chazz, recalled visits on December 6, 2024, and January 19, 2025, during which their grandfather clearly discussed his final wishes, including leaving them the Montana 5th Wheel and instructing them to assist their grandmother in selling a Ford F450 truck to fund transportation of his ashes to Hungary—details that matched the terms of the 2024 Last Will. A pharmacist friend, Susan Bastable, reported multiple visits during which he recognized her and carried on coherent conversations about his life and memories, and she described him as alert, coherent, and confident up to her last mid-January visit, though understandably sometimes in pain or tired.

The applicant’s will challenge and procedural history
After Mr. Laszlo’s death, the estate litigation evolved along two tracks. On June 12, 2025, the respondent applied for a certificate of appointment of estate trustee with a will based on the 2024 Last Will, recognizing herself as estate trustee and primary beneficiary. The applicant had already commenced a separate proceeding to be appointed estate trustee under the 2020 Will and had filed a notice of objection to the grant of probate on the 2024 Last Will.
The procedural complexity deepened when the respondent served a notice to objector, requiring the applicant to file a notice of appearance within twenty days. The applicant’s then-counsel filed that notice approximately ten days late. A prior judicial endorsement held that, because the notice of appearance was not filed in time, the respondent’s application for a certificate had to proceed as if the original notice of objection had never been filed. The Registrar therefore issued the certificate of appointment to the respondent. In the current application, the applicant sought, among other things, directions under Rule 75.06 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, including orders compelling production of the deceased’s medical and financial records, a litigation timetable, and the return of the certificate of appointment pending resolution of the will challenge.

Legal framework: minimal evidentiary threshold under Rule 75.06
The court grounded its analysis in Rule 75 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, which governs contentious estate proceedings in Ontario, and in the leading Court of Appeal authority Neuberger Estate v. York. Under Rule 75.01 and 75.06, an estate trustee or any person with a financial interest may apply for directions and ask that a will be proved in such manner as the court directs, but the court imposes a “minimal evidentiary threshold” that must be met before a full-blown will challenge will be allowed to proceed.
The Neuberger test requires the applicant to adduce, or point to, some evidence which, if accepted, would call into question the validity of the testamentary instrument. This is intentionally a low threshold, but it is not purely formal: bare allegations, generalized suspicion, or conclusory statements are not enough. If the applicant meets the threshold, the propounder of the will then has an opportunity to answer the evidence. If the propounder successfully answers it, the court should dismiss the challenge; if not, the court will typically direct that the will be proved in solemn form. Subsequent cases, such as Zarrin-Mehr v. Shokrai, have clarified that, while the threshold is minimal, it still requires evidence that could support the claim if accepted at a dispositive hearing and that the threshold stage is not the same as making full factual findings at trial.

Assessment of capacity, suspicious circumstances, and undue influence
On testamentary capacity, the applicant argued that the combination of advanced illness, multiple surgeries, a stroke, and opioid pain control gave rise to, at minimum, a serious question requiring the will to be proved in solemn form. However, the court emphasized that serious medical conditions and even cognitive diagnoses (such as dementia in other cases) do not, on their own, determine capacity. The legal test focuses on whether, at the time of execution, the testator understood the nature of the act, the extent of his property, and the claims of people who might expect to benefit. Here, the medical records lacked any notation that he was confused or incapable, and the applicant provided no expert evidence that the specific pain medications actually affected his testamentary capacity. The court found it inappropriate to infer incapacity solely from the presence of strong medication or severe illness.
On the evidentiary record, the court treated the affidavits of the grandsons, the pharmacist friend, and the second witness, Mr. Suvajdzin, as a strong and coherent answer to the applicant’s capacity challenge. These witnesses offered direct, contemporaneous observations that he remained capable, coherent, and oriented, and provided detailed accounts consistent with the content of the 2024 Last Will. The court contrasted this with the applicant’s reliance on medical charts and on portions of Mr. Voros’s affidavit that described him as heavily medicated and sleepy, but that notably did not state he was confused, disoriented, or incapable at the time of executing the will. The applicant herself did not provide personal observations of her father from visits or calls in the relevant period, which weakened the persuasive force of her allegations.
Regarding suspicious circumstances and undue influence, the applicant cited several points: the spouse’s insistence that the neighbour draft the will, the decision not to involve a lawyer at execution, the late notarization, the will not being shared with her, and the significant change of benefit away from her and toward the spouse. The court accepted that these circumstances could raise questions at first glance but held that they were adequately explained and rebutted by the respondent’s evidence. The record showed that the couple attempted to contact a lawyer, that language considerations explained the choice of Mr. Voros, and that the testator’s poor prognosis and impending transition to hospice were rational reasons for wanting to update estate planning urgently. The evidence also demonstrated a long-standing, loving marital relationship, which made it logically consistent that the testator would leave the bulk of his estate to his wife of fifteen years.
On undue influence, the court looked for signs that the spouse had overborne the testator’s free will or dominated the process. It was significant that Mr. Laszlo had multiple one-on-one discussions with Mr. Voros about the will’s contents, that the spouse was not present at the moment of execution, and that the will’s terms—such as the specific bequests to the grandsons and the instructions about the Ford truck and ashes—appeared to reflect his own longstanding intentions and relationships. The court found no credible evidence that Ms. Laszlo exercised coercion or pressure sufficient to undermine testamentary freedom.

Outcome and implications for the parties
In applying the Neuberger framework, the court concluded that the applicant had not met the minimal evidentiary threshold required under Rule 75.06. While she identified medical issues and procedural irregularities around the will’s preparation and notarization, these were effectively and convincingly answered by the respondent’s evidence from multiple independent lay witnesses and by the neutral medical records that did not show cognitive impairment. The court held that there was no sufficient evidentiary basis to call into question the validity of the 2024 Last Will, whether on testamentary capacity, lack of knowledge and approval, suspicious circumstances, or undue influence.
As a result, the application for directions was dismissed. The 2024 Last Will remained operative as the controlling testamentary instrument, and the respondent, Ilona Maria Laszlo, continued as estate trustee and primary beneficiary of the estate. In practical terms, this means that the daughter’s attempt to revive the 2020 Will, secure appointment as estate trustee, and recapture a larger share of the estate failed at this preliminary threshold stage. The court reserved the issue of costs: it directed the respondent and applicant to file short written submissions and costs outlines by set dates in early 2026, with no specific costs figure or damages award fixed in this endorsement. Accordingly, the successful party is the respondent, Ilona Maria Laszlo, but the total monetary amount of costs or any other financial award in her favour cannot be determined from this decision alone.