My brother has just been shafted out of £29k , I’m really angry.

[AchillesLastStand]

My Dad died in June this year from Alzheimer’s and left a valid will from 1993 leaving his estate of £115k to shared equally between his two children. My brother and stepbrother are down as executors. Since he died my two stepbrothers, the executor one and the other one have been making demands on the estate, as large as 75%. Now tonight, after 5 months of fighting them , my brother waves the white flag of defeat and offers them 25% of our inheritance without even asking me. I’m furious with my brother. He can just give away his sister’s inheritance without at least talking to me first. It’s the lack of communication that hurts the most.

What would you do? I can’t get them both removed as executors because the legal costs are enormous and it has to go to the high court. They have however acted illegally and are guilty of gross misconduct. I’m not sure I can even speak to my brother again after such a betrayal. It isn’t what we agreed.

OP, how close were you to your Dad were you little contact or no contact?, you seem to believe everyone is out to get you.
Your stepmother, your stepbrothers and you seem to dismiss the marriage between your Dad and step mum and minimise the relationship between your Dad and step children, your Dad made one an executor which shows that he trusted them.

Also who house did your dad live in? From what you have written it was your step mothers?

Does your brother have a relationship with you and his step brothers?

You can't also demand 75% of the total of your dads estate as that was not written in the will, you sound grubby saying this.

This is not going to end well if you are so entrenched in thinking everyone is out to get you.

Absolutely this. It's all so distasteful.

Following this with interest. I was in a similar situation to you but with a half-sibling we are all close to, but they were cut out of the will. We couldn't change the will so what we did was we waited until we'd received the money and then we each transferred an amount so our sibling had an equal share to us.

Neither of the will executors were related to us.

I don't see how your brother can unilaterally decide to give away your money. We couldn't, and we unanimously agreed we wanted our sibling to have their fair share.

Maybe sent a quick message to brother saying you don't consent to that, and get on the phone to a solicitor first thing in the morning?

What has your brother said when you have told him you do not agree with this?

Op I met through the same. And the process of a will can go on for years. It was so stressful it honestly nearly killed me.

Me and my brother were the beneficiaries of my father's will.

And someone else was the executor. The executor was left nothing . The executor eas bitter and jealous that he was left nothing.

He spent three years making the process as difficult as possible for the beneficiaries. He asked us to give him money. Then when we said no, he threatened to take us to court.

It was honestly hell on earth for me for three years.

I do not understand why their is an executor /beneficiary system at all. In most cases it never works.
And the executor causes trouble.

If you think about it: why would one person - the executor- want to work for free for two years - to give money to another person. They are always going to be jealous and want money from themselves.

After my dad died, and I had so much trouble with his executor for years. I never wanted to go through that again.

I know my mother wants to leave me her money. I said to her "in your will, please make me both executor and beneficiary, so I can do it myself".

She saw what I went through with dad's executor, and she agreed.

Your brother can't give any any part of the estate without your written agreement. It doesn't matter what he has told them

You posted this a couple months ago when it all started. You were give advice on what to do. Follow it!

The situation has now changed though. The OP took advice on the original issue and got proper legal advice that's how she knows the codicil is not relevant.

The will says the OP is being left half the Dads estate. She isn't being 'distastfull' or grabby to want that. It's her money now. All the rest of the info is irrelevant.

I’ve completely lost track as I’m not convinced this all make sense - but factually based on what you have said - a solicitor can advise that in their opinion the codicil isn’t valid, however only the probate court can make that decision, likely based on affidavit evidence presented at grant application stage. If the codicil was annexed to the grant of probate then the probate court deemed it valid. If the codicil wasn’t sent with probate app and was correctly executed by your father, that’s a fuck up by the solicitor.

an executor can’t vary the terms of the Will on their own without the residuary beneficiaries agreeing to the impact on their share of the estate.

you need legal advice as you have been told frequently, unfortunately stewing on it being unfair isn’t going to get this sorted. There are plenty of remedies available to deal with malicious executors (as you believe they are) but 20 years in this industry makes me very aware that sometimes correctly administrating an estate doesn’t make emotional sense and often ends up with decent executors being labelled unfairly as awful people by grieving family members.

I would take my own legal advice if I were you, OP. My guess is that your brother has offered them 25% because he's been advised that the costs and stress of battling this out in court would end up being at least that if not more. But I would definitely want my own legal advice on it.

No that's not entirely accurate.

She says she got legal advice and a solicitor told her it was invalid, BUT

She hasn't taken any action to challenge the validity of the codicil.

The executors have the grant of probate presumably based on the will+codicil.

So No, situation legally is unchanged.

The codicil only comes into effect where both OP and brother and step-brothers have died, then any children of those four inherit. As OP and brother are very much alive, the codicil doesn't matter, and the step-brothers are not in the will, only OP and brother.

One of those situations where you would love to know what the Dad actually wanted. Seems strange to ask a stepson to be executor but not want to leave them something.

What was your brother’s reasoning? What did you respond? How much is he proposing you and he get and for your two stepbrothers to receive?

I don’t know why you are thinking of agreeing to any alternative split of the assets.
Your father stated clearly in his will how his assets should be split.
That was his desire.
His decision.
No one else’s.
If your brother wants to give away some of his inheritance that’s his choice. He can do so after the will has been administered. He can’t touch your inheritance.

As an aside.
I have been an executor twice for relatives wills but I wasn’t left anything in either.
They just felt it better that someone more independent should handle everything to avoid squabbles.

My guess is there was a reason the Dad made his stepson executor and didn't leave OP more. We can only hear her side of the story, which is very bitter "disabled SAHM, wealthy stepbrothers, etc".

Stepmother left 25% of total 25% to OP because she allegedly hated her, but then we find out it was a really the Dad's total 25%..... So it was her Dad who wanted OP to have only 25% of that and brother 75%??

People often get really entitled over inheritances, but don't want to accept or acknowledge there may be reasons behind being "shafted".

That's fairly unusual though, it's normal for an executor to be left a pecuniary bequest to thank them for doing it.

I am currently joint executor with my cousin for my mum's estate, I'll do all the work but I do get 1/3rd of everything, cousin gets £5k and I doubt she'll do anything at all.

I suppose to an extent it depends on the size of the estate.

Stepmother left 25% of total 25% to OP because she allegedly hated her, but then we find out it was a really the Dad's total 25%..... So it was her Dad who wanted OP to have only 25% of that and brother 75%??

I don't think the OP has made this part at all clear.

Stepmother (in an unusual move) seems to have left 75% of her "house" (no other estate is mentioned) to her own sins, and 25% to her husband. Given the will was written before he needed care, where was he expected to live?
Then, despite the 25% having been left to the dad/husband, OP seems to have got her hands on 25% of that and her brother 75%.
How this happened is not clear - the father who had dementia could not gift it, of there was a power of attorney they also could but gift it (they have to act in the interests of the subject and giving his money away would not be).
Also, how the stepmother "hating" OP came into this is unexplained as SM didn't even leave the money to OP.

Ironically, had they left the stepmother's money with the dad, there would be more now for them to have 50% each of.

In one case it was cousins of mine who didn’t get on very well with one living abroad.
I got on very well with my aunt and she was hoping they’d get on better.
They were left her estate of £600,000 equally.

The other was a cousin who left it to her nieces. Her siblings were dead and she was leaving it all to them really out of guilt as her siblings had been cut out of the estate by her parents. I was local, she asked me. She gave me her mothers wedding ring as a Thankyou. That estate ( not in this country ) was worth £1.5 mill approx.

I disagree with those that say the situation. Has t changed. It has.

The Dads will leaves half to the OP and half to her brother. The codicil is irrelevant. It would have only kicked in if the OP and her brother predeceased the OPs Dad. It doesn't make the will invalid.

I dont think it's weird that the step brother was one of the executors. The OP said that her Dad and her Stepmother wrote their wills at the same time. The OPs Dad probably chose his son then, for whatever reason, didn't want to chose his daughter. Maybe he suspected that it might cause problems - he will then have wanted to choose someone else so he choose one of his wife sons. He will have trusted him to carry out his wished . I can see how that might have happened. He wouldn't have anticipated any issues. These wills were written up with a Lawyer so the OPs Dad was not being stupid in trusting that his estate would end up being split 50/50 between his two kids.

People are being really obnoxious telling the OP that she is being grabby for wanting what her Dad wanted her to have. It's her money now.

OP is not being grabby at all.

It might be worth contacting the original lawyer and asking for their case notes.

I assume the will said "100% to my wife or, if she predeceased me, split equally between my children". And that would explain why stepbro was executor. That and the fact a lot of people still seem to think it's a man's job!

Execute the will as written 50/50 between you and your brother. Anything else needs to be contested.

This. It's not grabby at all to want to honour someone's last wishes.

If anyone's grabby, it's the step brothers!

Exactly - legally your brother cannot just hand over your inheritance. If he wants to give them something out of his portion then he can go ahead. Seek legal advice. There is no big battle here - the will is valid and states your late father’s wishes quite clearly!

But he literally can’t do this. You have to be a party to any settlement agreement which alters the inheritance in the will.