Was Mils will fair?

[PurpleInGaloshes]

Looking for some impartial opinions on a family situation.
My mother-in-law recently passed away. She had four sons, and none of them were estranged from her. If anything, the youngest son was generally considered to be her favourite.
My father-in-law passed away many years ago, and they had bought the family home together years before he died.
Two of the sons are married and have their own homes. The other two are unmarried, have no children or partners, and still lived with their mum. They didn’t contribute towards the mortgage or upkeep of the house, but they did pay household bills and buy food.
In her will, she left the entire house to the oldest son only. The other three sons received no share of the house.
From what she told the family before she passed away, she believed the oldest son would “do the right thing” and give a 50% share of the house to the other son who still lived there. However, since inheriting the house, the oldest son has said it’s his house, he can do what he wants with it, and he has no obligation to share it.
I completely understand that it was her house and she had every legal right to leave it to whoever she wanted. I’m not asking about the legal side—I’m genuinely interested in what others think as my expectation, as bare minimum was that she would’ve have left it equally to the 2 sons that lived with her.
Do you think she should have left the house to all four sons equally? Or, if her intention was for the two sons living there to benefit, should she have written that into the will instead of relying on one son to share voluntarily?

While I agree that you should not write a will, then rely on somebody "to do the right thing", fairness is always a matter of judgement. Was it fair that my cousin left everything to the public school and Cambridge college he attended many years previously, neither of which are short of money, rather than to members of the family, many of whom are in a much worse financial position than he was? Possibly not, but in the end it was his money and his choice what to do with it.

Not sure what you mean?
In France, you can't write a will and cut out your children.

That is not what I was referring to. A previous poster said they preferred the French position of mandatory inheritances, ie the notion of forced heirship because it distributes value to all children. My point is the UK does not need a system based on continental forced heirship, because Wills themselves prescribe where the assets go. When you write your Will you can do so in a 'French way' if you want to. In fact, in the UK we have the concept of trusts, which generally give us even greater flexibility than French law and that of other civil law states.

On a separate note, since 2021 (reconfimed in 2025 after challenges) it has been possible to elect that your 'UK' Will overrides the forced heirship rules in another EU state in respect of property that is situated there. Therefore even if French law states that half goes to spouse and the other half to children equally, you can override that by electing in your UK Will that the beneficiaries will be different. So you can cut out your children in relation to French property, but you have to do it in the UK. There are complicated tax reasons why you may not want to do so, which revolve around 'usufructs' but that would be going off at a tangent...