Will construction and the admissibility of extrinsic evidence

Although they are often sought in the alternative by the same claim form, construction and rectification are in fact, in both principle and practice, quite different and often do not sit together particularly comfortably: construction looks to the terms of the will to determine the testator’s intention, whereas rectification looks to the testator’s intention to determine what should be the terms of the will. The two remedies have virtually opposite starting points.