New will made under intimidation - is a challenge likely to be successful?

[NotHappyWithWill]

My mother made a will years ago with my sister and I as executors and dividing her estate equally between us. Mother was a difficult woman, neither of us had a close relationship with her but my sister’s was better than mine.

Mother recently passed and behold, there is a new will - with my sister as sole executor and beneficiary of the whole estate, bar a token legacy for me.

Sister lived close to mother and dealt with shopping, liaising with care services, hospital and nursing home as mother’s dementia and frailty progressed. I lived 6 hours away. I constantly asked sister to let me know what I could do to help but she chose to carry the burden herself and increasingly isolated mother from me. If I telephoned mother and sister was there then my mother was uneasy and the conversation brief. My last planned visit was cancelled by mother who admitted she had been pressurised into doing so by my sister.

My sister often threatened mother that she would withdraw her support and have mother locked up in a home.

The probate is being carried out by a one man band solicitor who is an old colleague of my sister’s husband. Our family solicitors, who made the original will, are no longer in the picture.

I suspect mother was threatened into making this new will. Difficult as she was she did want things to be fair. I suspect that, had she gone to the family solicitors to make a new will then they would have been more circumspect.

I have never wanted a penny from my mother and had planned to pass my inheritance to my children. So should I put up a fight for their sake, or should I just walk away now.

I only have anecdotal evidence of duress.

There are plenty of encouraging noises from solicitors when I google this issue, but then there would be.

I recently made enquiries for a friend in a sort of similar situation. I was told by more than one solicitor my friend would be looking at £50,000 minimum in legal fees to challenge the will, plus obviously paying the other side's costs if they lost.

Unless the estate is huge, or you're happy to drain resources out of principle, there probably won't be much left anyway after fighting it out, and it's a lot of stress all round.

At a minimum in your circumstances I would consult a solicitor face to face. That would not be too expensive. I am not a lawyer but I have a friend who works in the field of contested wills, and she does a lot of mediation, which is much less expensive than going to court. I'm sorry for your loss. Your sister has behaved very badly. Hard to see how your relationship can survive this, sadly.

You can bring a challenge based on undue influence but it is a long, hard and expensive road. The burden is on you to show that your sister bullied your DM into changing the will.

How often did you visit your dm? And how long before she died was your last visit?
I think you need to let it go.
Your dsis did all the care and if you were 6 hours away you realistically couldn’t do much.
It’s likely unfair but elderly people are vulnerable and your dm relied on your dsis so wouldn’t have wanted to rock the boat.

If your sister has the will document in hand, and it is legally sound in how it has been written and witnessed, clearly stating the beneficiaries and who is being left what, then you'd set yourself up for a world of stress, expenses and unhappiness trying to change that situation.

all you can do is walk away from the stressful situation, perhaps comforted (if that's the word) that your sister 100% took care of your mother for what sounds like many years leading up to her death, with all the complexity of care arrangements, your mother's dementia (which is a horribly cruel disease) and probably felt she was justified in ensuring she was financially recompensed for that loss of her personal freedom with that responsibility on her shoulders. Wish her luck and get on with your life.

It's a shame your children weren't included in their grandmother's will but if you don't mention anything to them about it, they'll not miss what they didn't know about.

Do you and you sister not get on or something?

Even if my parents left me a fortune, I can't imagine not sharing it with my sister (unless she'd been selfish, no help whatsoever etc etc) And even then, I don't think I could do it to her in reality.

Could you ask her to share more with you?

I certainly wouldn't go down the legal route myself. It'd cost too much money and cause no end of bad blood.

I can't imagine it either, but then I have the great good luck to come from a close and loving family. I believe it's possible to put in some sort of objection to the will at the Probate Office which registers that there is a possible challenge to the will and prevents the executor distributing the assets until this is resolved. As I said above, I am not a lawyer, so don't rely on this! But as I also said, I really would go and talk this through with a qualified lawyer. It may well be that there is nothing to be done, but I wonder if a solicitor's letter might help - pointing out the massive discrepancy between the previous will and the final will with no obvious reason for it - you could ask if the deceased left any sort of written note explaining why she's left almost nothing to the OP and her grandchildren, or if the solicitor who drew up the will made notes about this which would include an explanation. Also, I'd be asking the solicitor to query if there is medical evidence that the deceased had the mental capacity to make a new will, given her dementia diagnosis - again, did the other solicitor make notes about this? Could this perhaps persuade the sister to agree to a deed of variation to change the will and give the OP a larger amount (not necessarily half, or even close, but larger than the trifling sum in the will) which she can pass on to the deceased's grandchildren? The sister might feel this is an acceptable compromise to avoid further hassle and unpleasantness.

If you want a realistic view of the likelihood of success with a challenge on the grounds that there was undue influence from your sister and the likely costs involved, you need to consult a solicitor who specialises in contentious probate.

If the new will was written up by a solicitor then your care will likely fail. Taking it even to mediation will likely cost in excess of £50k and to court over £100k, at least from my families experience. It's also likely to be a very unpleasant experience and quite exposing.

The will being written by a solicitor does not necessarily mean a challenge will fail. The question is whether OP has evidence of undue influence. But yes, contentious probate cases can be very expensive, particularly if they proceed to trial.

I'm sorry for your loss. I want to reflect back to you that there's some very emotive language in your post - 'My sister often threatened mother that she would withdraw her support and have mother locked up in a home', for example. From what you're describing, your sister did a lot for your mother as her health deteriorated, and it would be quite reasonable for her to have had to consider at what point she couldn't continue, and whether a care home might be a better situation for your mum. Similarly, it's not unusual for someone with dementia to become frightened and suspicious, even of those closest to them.

Before you embark on a lengthy, ruinously expensive and very distressing legal process to challenge the will, think very, very carefully about what can be established factually here, versus what you're feeling. Get some counselling support to do that, if necessary.

From having observed someone challenging a will through a legal process, I would say don't if you can avoid it. The process ate up vast resources, took months if not years, and irrevocably broke the relationship between the parties (which to be fair wasn't great to begin with).

By all means go to a solicitor and talk through your options if it would help you. But unless the solicitor says it's a slam dunk case (which they won't) or unless you were financially dependent on your mother (which you weren't), I would leave it in the past and concentrate on setting up your own arrangements such as will and power of attorney jointly between your children.

I would agree with @Persipan - my mum eventually stopped being able to support my dad with dementia, she lost her temper with him a fair bit through the strain, and helpful suggestions from relatives 100s of miles away were just not helpful (eg move to a smaller place, when my dad had no capacity to learn new layouts)

What your mum perceived as a threat and what was your sister trying to manage an increasingly crappy situation is hard to say

And , whilst you offered to help from 6h away, it may simply have not been practical for your sister to pass anything to you. Maybe you could have researched local cleaners, say - but if your sister was going round regularly, she would have been the one to notice if they were being lax and to have changed them.

You don't mention your sister's reaction to new will.
Is she surprised? Does she think it is fair? Does she think she deserves it?

To be fair, if she did all the care I reckon she deserves it. DH was the sole carer for his DM despite there being a few siblings. He sat with her thru thick and thin and even 3 times a day close to the end. She wanted for nothing. He was sole beneficiary (tho this was wrote years and years prior) and it was well deserved. The others didn't even call her, maybe twice a year.

How did you intervene when you felt your mother was being bullied and threatened by your sister? Six hours away or not, I think I would have been exploring alternative care options rather than leaving my mother in a vulnerable and unhappy state.

And what did you actually offer to do? I don’t mean asking if there was anything , I mean saying to your sister that you were, for example, going to take a week of leave and go and take over all the care, so your sister could have a break?

I think you would be very unwise to challenge what appears to be a perfectly legal will drawn up by a solicitor known to the legator, from what would not be to most people a position of moral superiority.

You need to put a stop on at the probate registry ( enter a caveat) asap while you take advice!!! It’s really easy to do and to remove. https://www.gov.uk/stop-probate-application

Thank you to @TibetanTerrah @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g @sparklefresh @Dacadactyl @prh47bridge @newnamechangeforthisone @PermanentTemporary @rcat74 for your very useful posts.

That’s a lot of replies over just six hours on a Sunday morning, which have enabled me to see how often this situation arises. Your posts have helped me make a considered decision on how to proceed, and I am grateful to you all.

There’s a couple of smug “it wouldn’t happen to me” comments, but the truth is, you won’t know until it does.

My sister didn’t care for my mother in any personal sense, she never lived with her, she simply dealt with the relevant agencies and authorities by telephone and email, which I could have done at a distance. She moaned constantly about her administrative burden, but refused any assistance. She kept me and the wider family at a distance, my mother was isolated. No conversations with my mother were allowed without my sister’s presence.

I intend to do nothing more. I will not let this taint my life but move on with my DH, kids and beautiful grandchildren - a joy she will never know (she hates kids, never wanted any, always completely ignored my grandchildren).

I hope her swag keeps her warm at night in her lonely old age.