Oh fuck what is going to happen?

[notahappybunny7]

My mum has passed away. She has left everything in her will to me(house paid(220k and about 50k in savings)
no other siblings off my mother but my dad has 4 more(no relationship with them)
they're married have been for 40+ years but he’s a twat who’s never worked properly, my mum has grafted her arse off to pay mortgage and ct, he has paid utilities and food, well the basics my mum alway bought her lunches and any luxuries. No joint accounts ever.
I’m not money grabbing it my mum wanted this for me and my daughter, to better our lives, he is saying he’s not moving and will contest the will. What will happen?

I think the issue here is not that your father has been disinherited but that your mother has tried to leave you part of the marital assets that belong to your father.
Think of it like this..........if they had divorced then the assets would have most likely been split 50 / 50.............it doesn't matter if you think it is unfair, after a long marriage your father is entitled to his share.

Your mother can leave you her share of the house but not your fathers.

Did he look after you while your mother worked? If so think of it as a role reversal since many SAHMs will have looked after the children while their husband works and be entitled to a share of their husband’s estate and a home to live in. I know you say he treated her badly but she stayed married to him and only you seem to know about the coercive control. The solicitor should have warned her about the possible claim from her husband and took steps, if any could have been taken, to reduce the likelihood of his claim being successful or at least reduced what he might get. Eg did she record any reasons why she left everything to you and say she didn’t want him to inherit for x, y, z reasons? You may end up having to reach a settlement with him and have a fraction of the estate for yourself. Your lawyer should advice what the options might be. It may be possible to agree on him occupying the house during his lifetime and then the house reverting to you. Goid luck and find a good lawyer with expertise in this area.

Exactly.

Also there are many examples of adult children marching their elderly to solicitors for parents to make sure a will is put a certain way.

Here we have one side of a story. We have not heard from the nearly blind 77 year old husband on disability who has lost his wife of 40+ years and whose daughter is trying to kick him out of the matrimonial home. So what if he contributed 2 pounds to every pound of his wife. In marriage/relationship we do not all earn the same as our partner. It's clear he worked, clear his marriage was long, clear he contributed financially.

No matter what has gone in in that marriage he has rights. You don't get punished for not being the perfect partner in relation to assets. Either he's legally entitled or he isn't. And it would be a pretty low blow for an only child to have her father put out on the street in order for her to get her hands on the house. Let him live there, it's clearly not going to be long term, and it was what should have been done in the will. If she contests this she will end up losing in legal fees.

He will live less long alone without his wife.

I can't stand my father and I'd never do this to him. And based on what the OP says, my father was way worse.

I would try to resolve this without getting legal costs incurred. My dad left a small estate and the will was contested and over half the estate went on legal fees which was still a lot of money.

@notahappybunny7
How is the will worded? Are you misunderstanding what it means?

Anyone who is married can write a will leaving their estate to anything or anyone. She could have left everything to the local cat charity.

Looking at the cold logic of it, I think what may happen is a compormise that he will live in the house till his death and then it will become the OP's as that was her mum's wish.

The fault here is the solicitor (if there was one) who allowed her mum to write her will.

They should have asked her what she intended to happen to her H (OPs father) if she died first. Was the will written on the assumption the dad would die first?

No decent solicitor would agree to creating a will that excluded a living spouse - without mentioning that it could be contested.

@notahappybunny7 Who wrote your Mum's will? If the solicitor still exists you need to talk to them.

Coffeedelight

Anyone who has a history of what sounds like childhood trauma, who has just lost one of their parents isn’t going to be thinking as clearly as they might. Regardless of rights/wrongs, this is a very complex bereavement and what the OP had asked for is legal advice. So, yes, I would say save the judgments - not helpful right now and potentially damaging. There is no point to them.

@ERAR Youre on the wrong thread

You need to make a new thread. This is a complex bereavement one. Best of luck.

You need to start your own thread in the Chat section or the Children's health section.

This is someone else's thread in the legal section, you won't get the answers you want here.

I hope your DS is better soon.

ERAR my post above was to you. I am also not great at the technicalities of these things!!

@notahappybunny7 why was your mum allowed/advised to write a will (if it exists) that excludes her spouse?

Is there a will or was it a verbal agreement with you and her?

Take her will to your own solicitor and / or speak to the ones who wrote it for her.

If she made a separate will then that is simply not true.

I’m so sorry everyone.. I’m new and I’m lost here 🤣 I’m so confused.

Report your post to admin (wee tab is on your post) and explain your mistake. They’ll help you get to the right place. Good luck with your son, looks so painful.

Wills

You can write whatever you like into one. I can write that my husband gets one million and the crown jewels. If there is no money there, than the beneficiary will not get anything. And clearly as I don't own the Crown Jewels I may will them but it has no legal effect.

It is not clear that despite the house being in the mother's name that the father does not have either a) some kind of equity stake based on his household contributions or b) some rights as per the legal Act (dependency) the others put up.

It's freightening so many people think it's ok to turf out an old disabled bereft old man. Just because a person with a vested interest on the internet says he wasn't a nice husband.

So you can have empathy for the poster but you think it’s ok for her to kick her disabled and ill-health father out just after losing his wife?

I can imagine a son posting on here, saying his father died and he wanted to evict his disabled mother so he could access the assets. I can’t imagine there would be an empathetic, positive comment in sight.

I can’t find how I delete this.. sorry to the persons thread m trying remove it now.. so complicated 😩

Cailin66

The OP is feeling hurt, raw and is in the acute phases of a complex grief reaction. We have no idea how she will feel/think/behave in the future. The law is there to protect people. Her solicitor will advise. Right now, she just needs to get the solicitors advice and grieve.

Yeah if you call
looking after me sitting me outside a pub while he got pissed with his mates

@prh47bridge it sounds like as it stands the father doesn't know what's in the will, perhaps doesn't know there's a will at all.

Do you know - if it's right that OPs father has 6 months after probate to challenge the will and after that he's not able to - if OP gets probate granted, and in the background gets the land registry updated to her name etc, all without saying anything much to him while doing what the will says, just leaving him to live in the house without comment, then once the 6 months is up would it all be done and unchallengeable? Or would the fact he wasn't informed about the contents of the will (doesn't sound like he's a beneficiary at all) mean he could still challenge it after the 6 months?

OP, when you went to the solicitor with DM, do you remember if she told the solicitor that she was married?

OP I am really sorry for your loss. Families can be really complex and if I'd watched my mum being coercively controlled by my dad for years, I wouldn't want him to receive a penny in her will either. Just ignore people making judgements on whether you're right/wrong to want to cut him out - this is Mumsnet so it's always going to be judgy!

However, I do think you need to brace for the fact that he does have a legal claim, as he was married to her for 40 years. Usually the assets in a marriage go to the spouse when one partner dies, mainly because those assets are largely considered to be jointly owned anyway. I am no expert on wills or probate but could see that this could easily turn into a situation where half the estate gets sucked into legal fees, so I would get some independent advice - from more than one source - if I was you. You could offer to look after your father financially in return for him not contesting the will but £220K won't last long if it has to be spent on his care home fees. Some kind of mutually agreed settlement might be best.

Again as other pps have mentioned, it's not about how good of a husband or stepfather he was. That should have been addressed at the time.
A SAHM watching series the whole day and only feeding her kids cereal, still "took care of the children ".
No matter that she was neglectful. Should have been addressed then.

I don't think you should follow the advice to write him an eviction letter. If I were a disabled 77 year old, my next action would be to call a lawyer to stake a claim, and call aged care services and tell them that my daughter was trying to evict me from the home I'd lived in. It's likely that this would result in social services getting involved, supporting him to get legally supported and do what they can to protect him.

I also wouldn't encourage you to quietly change the details until the time to contest the will has passed, then evict. Concealment and omission might cause issues legally in themselves.