Friend forged her mother's will

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I have recently learnt that my friend who I have known since forever forged her late mother's will.

I don't want to go into too much detail about how I learnt this as it will be too outing.

It was nearly 4 years ago when her mother was most vulnerable on her death bed little over a week before she passed. There was another will put in place for around 20 years before this new will and that previous will was destroyed by my friend. Both wills were made at home.

It has nothing to do with me, but my friend took advantage of her dying mother, and now I feel different towards her because of this. I am supposed to be her bridesmaid at her wedding in a few months and I cannot get past how someone could do that for her own advantage. I have known this friend since nursery. We are both late 20's now.

Is it wrong of me to feel different about my friend? I understand this has nothing to do with me but it's the fact she has done it. How cruel towards her other family members.

Having my will done with a solicitor and lodged with Wills Scotland and getting a POA drawn up may end up being the best 500 quid I’ve spent. I’ve remarried and everything I own goes to my kids not to my new husband. I’m pretty sure he can take care of himself.
This case goes to show how important it is to spend a bit of time and money doing it properly.
I couldn’t be friends with someone who I know is a happy fraudster.

Agree. I never understand why people try not to spend money on wills. DH and I got wills in 2019 and it would have cost £250 for both of them from the law firm i then worked for (it was free as i worked there but that was the actual cost for clients).

I have had friends - rich friends- ask me to do their wills for them at 'mates rates'. What is a fucking mate rate? These people spent £5k on a garden designer to just draw a picture of what they could do to their garden. (Not provide plants or grunt work). £250 plus VAT for a pair of valid wills is chump change FFS.

Here is what you should spend money on. Wills.

I hope the siblings have been told, & can challenge the will.

My first thought - what an awful human being. It sounds like she removed bequests to other family members to increase her own share.

Second thought - why has she told you this? She must be as thick as pigshit.

Third thought - how did she deal with the need for witnesses to sign/attest? Did she fake all three signatures?

Agree with everyone saying get your wills sorted. A few years ago someone was outside Tescos promoting Wills Week and offering a reduced fixed fee for a limited time. I told him I already had one (I'm a solicitor- not a probate one but my bequests were simple so I did my own) and he said the majority of people he'd spoken to didn't. I expressed surprise and said I wondered why. He said the most common reason us it makes people "think they are going to die". Well no shit Sherlock, that's inevitable!

I’ve seen cases where wills have been amended close to death - either through fraud or because someone had a last minute change of heart. It’s very hard to prove wrongdoing and very expensive.

that being said, I wouldn’t be able to be friends with someone who did this.

edited because I can’t spell

What kind of forgery - one her mother wanted?

Presumably as the dead lady's daughter, the money was coming to her anyway?

I'm trying to figure out what kind of deception has occurred.

How did you find out? Did she tell you?

Really? You can't think of it? Other siblings for example? Money left to charities dear to her heart?

When FIL died BIL snuck out of the church during the funeral service and cleared the house of all valuables and then denied it. If he had been able to forge the will he would have done so.

People who are amoral arseholes walk among us.

Well, she's commited a criminal offence; hopefully there'll be bigger consequences than you not being her bridesmaid OP

Why has it only become a dilemma four years on?
You've stayed close enough friends with her all this time and now it's a problem because she's asked you to be her bridesmaid?

Well surely it depends on the demographics he'd been speaking to?
Many younger people have no savings and can't even afford a house. What's the point of making a will if you have nothing to leave anyway.

I couldnt continue a friendship with someone like that… what would be the point.

Her siblings can and will be able to contest her mother's will and ironically she will be left with even less than her mother left to her in the first place after legal fees. Don't worry, OP, her comeuppance will arrive in due course.

If you're 28 now, your friend would have been 24 when the new Will was made. The old Will would have been written when she was 4. A lot can change in 20 years and assuming she was early 20's when she lost her mum the mother would have been young and perhaps not thought she would need to worry about a new will.

Scenario 1- old will leaves her house and cash savings to an ex partner of 10 years.

Scenario 2- old will leaves money split equally between siblings and new will leaves everything to your friend.

I'd need more context before drawing an opinion on whether this would be friendship ending for me.

Not a will but a similar situation.

My uncle ( one of 7 ) forged the transfer of my grandads house into his name.
He then burnt the house down whilst he knew my grandad would be in church ( remote place in Ireland )
He then used insurance to build nice new house and waited.
Grandad died a few years later having spent those years mourning the loss of his family home and spending his days just sitting on its doorstep as that was all that was left.
After my grandad died my uncle then tried to sell the house and it’s at this point his siblings realised what he had done, the will was useless as grandad no longer owned the house

However
Divine retribution moment
My uncle didn’t realise the house and land were on two separate deeds and he only owned the house.

So he couldn’t sell the house as legally he couldn’t access it as it was surrounded by land now owned by his siblings as well.

And there to this day sits the house in a ploughed field with a 1m walkway around it.

The whole affair tore apart a once close family and all for greed!

So I would step away OP, she’s shown her true colours

Obviously depends how complicated your life is. I have no dependants so it's not really something I'll worry about, certainly not spend £500 on.

Yes, there are...I signed my neighbour's Will, along with another neighbour, and said '{Name, you should REALLY be getting a solicitor to do your Will''....however, when neighbour died, there was no come back on us, the witnesses.

No one checked.

However.. I assumed the house {quite valuable} was given to her daughter and granddaughter.
This was who sold the house in the end, so they must have been the beneficiaries.

This sort of thing might very occasionally be defensible If the old will had been hugely overtaken by events e.g. it'd very obviously been made on a daft whim at the time or had been massively blown out of the water by subsequent births, deaths, or estrangements.

Generally, though, this sounds like despicable behaviour, the sort of thing that for me would easily justify cutting off all ties.

And so , nobody but you know this and this friend gobbled up all the money in this illegal way or were the authorities made aware ?

It depends massively on what the outcome was. Did she diddle her siblings out of 200k or did she tweak it so she got her mother’s gold locket that she loved as a child? Was it all going to the cats home and she inherited half a million? It depends massively.

My husband has been an executor of a will recently and loads of money has been left to a distant niece who didn’t have a nice word to say about the person who had died. She said ‘we all fell out 25 years ago and I couldn’t stand her’. She was left a significant amount - life changing. My husband wishes he discussed the will with the deceased person, all the money went to randomers from the dead persons dead spouse who died 15 years earlier.

Maybe your friend was acting for the best. Maybe not. I wouldn’t get worked up about it.

Absolutely don’t be a bridesmaid. Chances are she is pissing her poor Mum’s money away on a fancy wedding

Is it possible she faked your signature as a witness?

It would only be wrong if you DIDN'T think differently of her after this. Your reaction is that of a normal, decent human with morals and an ethical conscience.
You'll need to figure out if you want to remain friends with someone who can do this, if it was me I couldn't.

If a person’s will is pretty simple, e.g. ‘I leave everything to my (named) spouse/partner’, or ‘to be divided equally between my (named) children’, and provided the person is reasonably intelligent/literate, I don’t see why they should necessarily pay a solicitor.

OTOH a childless aunt of mine left her assets to be divided equally between 11 nieces and nephews. And if any of them had died in the meantime, their share was to go to their children.

But the will then added that ‘children’ would mean all of them, ‘…. whether natural or adopted, legitimate or illegitimate.’
I would guess that this was the solicitor’s addition, in order to be crystal clear in case of any disputes later.

What did the first will say and how was the later one different?