How easy is for a grown up child to contest a will?

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Hi, will try keep this short and some details tweeked. My legal jargon is not the best so bear with me.

male relative died suddenly early this year, they had no spouse or partner and lived alone, they had one grown up child (30) who lives hours away, had an okay relationship with child growing up, always paid maintenance, would have child for the whole school holidays and buy clothes and uniform and stuff to go back with. Things went a bit sour when their son got to the teenage years. My relative had got himself in a bad way with mental health and other physical illnesses (can’t be exact to what due to not wanting to give myself away!) was unable to drive so far to pick up child and have them so much, they could barely look after themselves and was at this point considered disabled. Contact was still made over the phone, more occasional visits and relative always paid for their child but slightly less as was unable to work at this point due to lifelong health issues. The child’s family are not nice people, for years they’ve given my family abuse, both physical and verbally. Threats have been made to us all including wanting to harm us - we do have some proof of this. The family are violent thugs. They caused damage to relatives property many years ago just out of spite. They are known to be a violent family and moved away as no one wanted them around the local area.

the child’s mother also always used to say she wasn’t sure if the child was my relatives as she had two men on the go at the time.

male relative hadn’t seen or heard from his grown up child for years.

A small flat was owned by deceased relative outright and mortgage free . He had a will and the flat has been left to his brother and sister who are also executors of the will. the flat is worth around 100 grand now if that’s relevant.

Grown up child was contacted to tell them that their father had passed away and this got followed with abusive messages to us and then randomly asking what happened (it was deemed sudden). Then a day or so after death grown up child and their mum was contacting solicitors local in our area asking if there’s a will and they got the deceased names wrong and everything!

didn’t hear anymore about now we’ve been contacted by a solicitor local to them.

we are worried that they might try and contest the will.

bearing in mind the two set to inherit looked after their sibling for years when in ill health and their grown up child had turned nasty and threatened to harm their parent.

anyone know much about it all?

the will is clear that their child doesn’t to inherit due to the stress over the years, the threat my cousin has made to his parent and the rest of us. We have some of the messages that were sent to us after death that weren’t nice from his child and recordings of verbal abuse.

It’s a good idea to at least skim the OP before hitting the “reply” button.

The son can attempt to challenge the will if he wants. If the will was drawn up by, and executed in the presence of, a solicitor, and particularly if the wording makes clear that he was deliberately disinherited, then the son will have an uphill battle trying to challenge, and I imagine any solicitor he consults on the matter will advise him likewise.

I'm not a legal expert but when Mil died one of her sons was left out of her will due to a fall out. This had been noted in her will.
The solicitor dealing with the estate told DH and his sister that there brother could not contest the will as
A) it was stated in mils will.
B) son was not a dependant of mils.
This son did speak to his solicitor but nothing was heard from him again.

This was in England.

It is expensive and lengthy to challenge a will. Your relative left a valid will and so I wouldn’t worry. Let them get legal advice I’m sure you won’t hear anymore.

There is one possible situation, as mentioned by a previous poster, and that is if the child is disabled or has, for example, a life limiting illness then they may still be able to challenge it.

Cases that have been successful include an adult daughter who had a rare degenerative disease and could not work. The estranged father had left her £25k out of an estate worth £245k, the rest going to his sister (the child's aunt). She was awarded a further £85k and also costs against her aunt.

Or in another case, there was a 50 year old daughter who had a complex psychiatric disorder, considerable financial problems and she lived in substandard rented accommodation with two young children. She was awarded £139k out of an estate worth £554k

But if nothing like that applies then they are very unlikely to be successful.

For example, in the case of Shepton v Seviour in the High Court in 2020 an adult daughter who was comfortably off made a claim on her father's estate which went to her stepmother (even though stepmother was leaving her an equal share on her own death). The judge said that her case was "absolutely hopeless" and gave her nothing.

https://www.freeths.co.uk/insights-events/legal-articles/2020/the-good-the-bad-and-the-hopeless-shapton-v-seviour-2020/

If you live in Scotland then you certainly can disinherit any child from receiving land or property.

There are certain situations when you cannot disinherit a child in Scotland from receiving a share of the "moveable estate". The moveable estate is everything except land or property, so that includes investments, bank accounts, jewellery, vehicles etc

When it comes to the moveable estate then if there is a surviving spouse, the spouse is entitled to one third of the value of the moveable estate and then a further one third is to be shared equally between any children.

If there is no surviving spouse then one half of the moveable estate is shared equally between the children.

But land and property are excluded from this and you can put what you want in the will with regard to your house.

Well.then there's really no contest to have here. They had a very clear will, a clear rationale for the changes to the will.

You can hire a solicitor to write any letter you want, doesn't mean it's a valid court case. The solicitor may even have advised that they have no basis or may not have had full story given. I suggest getting the solicitor who are handling probate and who did will to write a letter saying that the will is valid, has a clear basis for the decision and therefore they will execute in accordance with the will

Hi

I'm speaking from experience. I'm in Scotland. In Scotland, children are covered by legal rights.

My husband's will left everything to me, but to his children if I predeceased him.

When he died, one third of the moveable estate - according to their legal rights - was divided amongst his adult kids. (Moveable estate would be cash, car, jewellery...)

He hadn't made provision for his grandchild, but told me what to give them and I honoured that. (In fact, as executor I gave them all a bit more than their legal entitlement.)

In Scotland, the child in question would not be entitled to the gentleman's flat.

It’s very expensive to challenge a will so it sounds unlikely that son will go through with it since he could end up with nothing and a big fat legal fee.

Just to add that in Scotland, in order to contest the will the complainant would have to argue that the gentleman was either of unsound mind or under coercion when he wrote it.

I have direct experience of this but as the child… although my ‘auntie’ annd sole beneficiary of dads will, was actually the one in the wrong.
anyway, we could challenge the will as his biological children. if the child is not in a great financial position (benefits), would still be dependant on deceased (as in disabled etc) then child would have a better chance.
we had absolutely loads of evidence that my dad was unlikely to have been of sound mind and that he was manipulated by his sister but solicitors still advised us it would be unlikely we would be able to completely overturn will and going to court is extremely costly. Also, if you lose then you have to pay other parties costs.
it cost us £18k just for back and forth letters and then mediation and we barely got double that from his 300k estate.
what I would say though is don’t fight over money. Also, for us, it wasn’t really about the money but the complete rejection from my dad (even though it wasn’t his fault), it also hurt that our auntie could do that to us.
i know they may not have had a relationship but you need to really think about whether that was child’s fault or deceased and if you can come to an agreement then I really would. Think how you would feel if you were in child’s position.
my uncle has actually just passed, he had children he didn’t see but he did have time to get in contact with them (cancer) and he has left what little he has to them. He also has another child who he tried to contact but he would not have anything to do with him. He has not included this child in his will but his other children have already said if they can build a relationship with him then they will share.
100k is not worth fighting with solicitors over but maybe sharing might help relationships

@Namechanger124 I agree with everything you are saying and totally sympathise. Generally in an ideal world his son would inherit however my cousin has threatened harm to us, including his father a few years ago so we cut contact all together. I think a relationship with cousin has long sailed sadly. He was a troubled child and honestly I would be happy to never see him again. It was absolutely my uncles choice to put his siblings down as beneficiaries. They have always been close and of similar age.

as for myself I am the child my father never bothered with, he’s married with kids and I only met him for the first time as an adult. I know I would never be in his will and I would never expect to be either.

families are hard. It’s not really so much us wanting the money or anything but more so the principal of it all. A day after relative died, he was sniffing around about the will, we had contacted him about his fathers death and this just led to abusive messages.

my uncle definitely wasn’t perfect however I think the family of my cousin are just all about evil!

@Namechanger124 I am likely to be in a similar situation in the future I believe my dsis has convinced dm to change her will so what sort of evidence did you have the sister manipulated the will to be changed
So far dsis who has gone nc with me has removed me as poa done equity release on dm account i know she's been helping herself to money and registered the poa with dm bank
I referred it to opg in January still not even assigned to anyone adult safeguarding referred it to the police who visited dm she said nothing is going on so they have closed the case unless opg come up with something

Can't even have a conversation with dm as she's suddenly decided to not let me in her house she pleasant enough but now any conversation is on the doorstep with a ring doorbell connected to dsis phone

This is the exact position we were in. His sister had nothing to do with him previously and then all of a sudden she appeared on the scene, tried to get poa, went to harbour and claimed abuse to try and get a no contact order, would ring the police every time we went to his house.
we honestly had so much, I had pages and pages of abuse she had sent me and my family by text etc.
i had loads of medical notes from drs as he had MS. So lots of ‘patient is confused’ etc. he had an appointment for dementia test but this was at this same time so unfortunately he didn’t go.
we had social services records where it says ‘spoke to dad he doesn’t want no contact order with daughters’ and then the next note from sister saying ‘I have spoke to my bro and he absolutely does want it’.
police records where they have stated she is speaking for him, he is confused etc.
police records where she blatantly lies, even about obvious things such as he has no radiators in his house but police have wrote he does and they are switched on.
even the solicitor letter he wrote stating why he was excluding us from the will made absolutely no sense!
she had statements from his neighbour that were blatant lies, again things we could prove, like saying he would phone dad everyday but not on any phone records!
unfortunately though because he did not attend the dementia app he had to be classed as of sound mind as no one had officially declared him anything but.
we only got to mediation and all solicitors were in agreement that we probably had a 40% chance of winning as it is so so difficult to change a will and it is all on the people not in the will to prove. Unfortunately we could not afford to take the risk of losing as then we would have had to pay other parties costs as well so we had to settle. She was an absolute horrible evil bitch though and she obviously had the gift of the gab as she had managed to convince everyone she spoke to that she was telling the truth even though she had zero evidence, even neighbours who had known us since childhood and had never even heard of her!

we tried everything we could while he was alive, like you went to ss, police etc but got no where.

if I could do it again I think I would go the other way, be overly nice, involve myself in everything and do everything you can to keep your mum talking to you and trusting you. Your best chance is to get your mum to include you otherwise you are very unlikely to be able to fight it. Also, it is so expensive! It cost us £18k without even going to court!
when I feel stronger I’m going to go to MP or something and try to highlight what is happening with wills and vulnerable people.

As PPs have said, a successful claim depends on the jurisdiction (location) and circumstances. In England and Wales, if the adult child was known to exist by the parent and wasn't dependent and there was a will then they can easily contest a will though it will be expensive for them to get to court and they are unlikely to succeed hence the threats. Direct any communications to the executor and involve the police with threats. Tell the claimant to engage a lawyer if they think they have a claim so they can get told by someone who's not family that they won't have a successful claim and it will cost a lot which they'll lose.

Good luck.