Brothers win £460K inheritance fight with their Dad’s “Secret Family”. Here, McAlister Family Law’s Jason Stanley looks at the recent court ruling and the importance of preparing a clear will.
In a recent court ruling, a judge ordered that the deceased’s estate that was initially shared equally between his five children, be re-distributed to only three of them. The quirk of this case is that the deceased outlived his wife and both died intestate, having made no Wills. The deceased was survived by not only three biological children of their marriage but he secretly fathered two additional children having been in an illicit love affair with another woman.
All five children met for the first time at the funeral. However, a potent argument that the three biological children successfully ran was that their late mother’s estate and assets passed to their father automatically as she was his spouse and that it was unjust for that to be shared with two children who were not hers.
In other words, the judge found that as their late mother did not know about her husband’s secret life and children, on a balance of probabilities it was highly unlikely that she would have wanted anyone other than her husband or her own children to have benefited from her estate. The non-biological children attempted to argue that if she had been so concerned about ensuring that her surviving children received inheritance, she would have made a Will to that effect. This did not find favour with the judge.
The lack of a clear and express declarations and instructions in a Will document clearly provided fertile ground for interpretation and subsequent contentious litigation that will have cost tens of thousands of pounds to resolve. Had the deceased instructed a specialist solicitor to advise him, prepare a clear Will with his express wishes (to include or exclude the children from his estate), to potentially prepare a letter of wishes to elaborate on his decisions, this would have assisted the children and their advisors prior to litigating to make early and sensible decisions the emotional and financial trauma could have been avoided. Having said that, as the deceased lived a double life and one of deception, perhaps it is not surprising that he did not disclose this to anyone, let alone a solicitor and his secret died with him leaving emotional pain and confusion for his surviving family to unravel.
