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?

Regardless of your dad's shitty behavior and minimal contributions, I would have thought the fact the house was solely in your DM's name and she left it solely to you in her Will makes his claim untestifiable?

Lawyers feel free to tell me otherwise...

I recently did probate as an executor. My advice is to stay calm as it is not easy to contest a will. Especially if there was a will, drafted by a solicitor. Someone with dependency claim had been excluded in my case. I was advised to proceed with probate administration on the basis of the will instructions. The matter is now concluded with the court, but that process can take many months to complete. I was also advised that the dependent who might try to contest would probably need a lot of money to fund a solicitor to do so, and over a prolonged period of time until a court hearing. You read these adverts offering no win no fee, but they only take on cases that have a certain basis. As executor, you could write to your late mother's doctor asking for all her medical records. There maybe something of the relationship history lurking in there that works in your favour in the event of a court hearing. I would tell your father nothing, and get proper legal advice. Report nothing on social media. Also gather up all the bank details, house deeds or anything else relevant to probate. You can ask her banks to send you 6 years of statements, and that will show who was paying the bills. Given the value of the estate, this is a fairly straight forward probate application. I would ignore your father threatening as talk is cheap, and proceed with the probate application asap. Once grant of representation is granted, there are slim chances of any contesting application being considered by solicitors or the courts. A solicitor would have to intervene to stop probate so refuse to enter any discussion with your father, and let him do the leg work if he is going to.

The only way to effectively disinherit a spouse is to divorce them. A spouse can contest a will on the grounds that he wasn't left with a reasonable financial provision. Marriage is an economic partnership as well as a legal one, and as your parents were married when your mum died, your dad will almost certainly get a hood chunk of the estate.

I'm sorry for your loss, and while I can appreciate the sense of injustice you might feel, you do need to prepare yourself for the fact that the estate will be divided up.

Do you actually have a copy of the will and are you named as executor? I3 am sorry you are having to deal with all this as well as losing your mum.

It is possible to state in a will why you are disinheriting someone and the solicitor who helped draw up the will should have given some advice about this. You may be able to get a free 30 minute initial consultation with a solicitor as well as contacting the one your mum used. Your father can make a claim based on being dependent financially on his wife. The cheapest outcome for you may be to come to an agreement with him, rather than both of you paying all the money to solicitors.

As I understand it they will start from a base of what would he have been entitled to if they had divorced. So in other words a starting point of 50/50 wrt the marital assets. He'll probably get his half and you'll get her half

@PerfectYear321 you can only pass on what you have an interest in. But if the house is registered in only the mother’s name then she could absolutely will it, and (not my area of law so I don’t know at what point this happens) once the probate process happens it passes to whomever is named in the will.

whether they are joint assets etc is a separate question. Only things that were owned jointly as tenants in common will pass under a will. But that’s not what OP has indicated is going on here.

Everybody’s advice is so much appreciated but I’m completely exhausted and need to go to bed. I will be back in the morning, thank you all

I'm not a lawyer but I believe the most relevant bit of legislation would be the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependents) Act 1975

As executor, you could write to your late mother's doctor asking for all her medical records. There maybe something of the relationship history lurking in there that works in your favour in the event of a court hearing
Wtf??

I think that he will challenge the will.

The fact that he didn't contribute and didn't work will go in his favour. It will show that he was financially reliant on your mother. It will also be easy for him to show he was reliant on your Mum for providing housing seeing as she housed him for 40 plus years.

Can you remember what the Solicetor your Mum saw about her wills said about her disinheriting her husband? I'm NOT legally trained but I wonder if it would have been better for your Mum to leave you the house but to have allowed your Dad to live their until he dies.

Did your Mum leave him anything at all?

This is good advice for how to proceed

Also, I a, very sorry for your loss.

@scoobydoo1971 ’s post is sound advice.

I think that people need to be kinder to the @notahappybunny7
. She has just lost her mother and her father is transferring (or increasing?) his abuse from her mother to her. Of course she is angry and lashing out. Who wouldnt?!

I think the legal issue is that the home may be seen as a marital asset, ie owned by them both regardless of who paid the mortgage or who's name it was in. One would hope that the solicitor who drew up the will would make sure that this was covered, but they may not have done. So I agree that the first step is independent advice about the will and to start probate.

Freezing all of her accounts etc should be done asap. Banks are supposed to follow probate but dont always. DPs dad died four years ago. Seperated from DPs mum for years but never divorced. He had an account that everyone knew was his savings for DP but he never made his will as he got very ill out of the blue and passed away shortly after. DPs mum said, despite saying "oh your dad has savings for you" that as his wife all his assets were hers and the bank just forked them over within 8 weeks of his death. They lived at seperate addresses but she showed up at his bank with a copy of the death certificate and their marriage certificate and they just did it.

DP wasnt fussed about the money but he cut his mum off after that and made a complaint to the bank. Hope less than £3k was worth losing her son and grandchildren for.

This is wrong advice. If you get divorced they don't give a fuck if he was an abuser or adulterer unfortunately. Surely medical records don't prove anything if it wasn't prosecuted anyway.

I'm not sure it is necessary at this point, and the medical practice might decline, but when a close family member died I was able to get copies of all their psychology and medical notes by following the formal processes to do so.

Good to know, if you are a solicitor

This is the most knowledgeable advice in this thread as the poster has been in a similar situation. Get probate asap.

To what purpose? His share of the marital assets won't be withheld even if the medical records show evidence of abuse.
It's doubtful they do, anyway

I doubt, in OP's case, there is any purpose. I was just pointing out it was possible, as suggested by the poster I was replying to.

NAL but I think a long marriage is going to have some weight and any allegations of abuse may be considered hearsay. I also suspect it's not relevant. Whatever the state of the marriage, OP's mother was married to him and living with him, he did contribute and could make an argument for being a dependent, so the only correct action here is a lawyer for OP ASAP.

Unfortunately it's not about distain for abused women. That poster was being completely neutral in terms of what the law says about assets for a married couple - especially one still living together.

The law does not take into account whether there was abuse in the relationship. It is blind to that. It only sees that they were married and he was essentially financially dependent on her. And that's why he may well have good grounds to challenge you. If he does, he has a good chance of succeeding.

You need to understand this, it doesn't matter if the house is in the name of one party or both - the house was still their joint asset because they were married and he was financially dependent on her - and that's what he could perhaps argue.

And you need to temper your expectations, emotions and anger with this in mind. And to get proper legal advice on what steps you can take and how likely he is to succeed.

It's not a nice situation. The best way to explain it is to say it ultimately rests on how much of the estate was your mother's to leave to you in the first place and how much of the estate effectively belongs to your father.

Did he pay only his half of the utilities or did he pay all of them?

Right do utilities are in his name, his income is benefits, he can’t work, age 77 and registered blind, although he has some limited vision

On benefits not pensions, 77, registered blind mean he would be classed as vulnerable. I think he would be relatively high priority to be housed by the council in sheltered housing with other seniors. Somewhere suitable for his needs. When you get to the point you need to discuss what happens to the house and he realises he can't stay you need to point him to the council / social services.

I hope he isn't turning his abuse on you - he likely will when he realises his cushy life of 40 years is over and the will is in your favour - but you seem like you won't take any sh*t from him. Just remember you don't want to fire him up to want to contest the will. You want him to realise the council will find him somewhere to live and that's good enough without him needing to contest the will.

@PerfectYear321 not sure if that was a question or a statement 🙂
I am a solicitor but not in family law/ wills and probate so comments here are just based on legal studies and not practice. But my first advice to anyone with a legal issue is stay calm, mind who you share information with, gather your documents and go see a solicitor. Yes it is expensive but usually no cost for an initial chat and then a couple of hours can usually take you quite far and don’t cost that much to get advice on up to date law and the practical aspects of what will usually happen. Certainly might be able to spare you a lot of heartache.

Yes, sorry. I wasn't disagreeing with you that such a thing is possible, I was just wondering what possible impact it could have on the situation.