Professor John Mee:

It only applies at a secondary level. What happens is that there is a constructive trust, with half for the killer and half for the estate of the victim. When we are deciding what the estate of the victim is, if he or she left everything to the husband who is the killer, separately he or she will be deprived of the right to inherit part of the estate.

The Deputy's main question is what profit does the killer receive when there is a severance? In the Cawley-Lillis case Ms Justice Laffoy said there was no benefit. She said there were all these imponderables. We cannot which person would have lived longer. She said that at the end of the day there was no benefit, that she was satisfied that creating this severance, which meant that everything stayed the same, except that there was no right of survivorship, would not benefit the killer.