Executors v Widow - personal belongings

[LimpingPigeon]

My sister and I are executors of our father's will and entitled to the residue of the estate.

Our mother died years ago, but he remarried before he died in March 2026. A new will was executed following the marriage.

The will gives his wife a cash lump sum and a life interest in his half of the house (which they owned 50:50 as tenants in common) and use of the contents. "Contents" has been defined in the will as "all my furniture, furnishings and household effects".

Widow seems to consider that all his belongings are hers to keep / give away as she sees fit. She has given us my mums jewellery and old family records but is being cagey about everything else. Obviously all his belongings are in the house with her.

There is nothing of great (if any) monetary value but there are loads of ornaments, records and bits and pieces that he or our mum bought, plus there is a small amount of jewellery of his (wedding ring, watch and a couple of necklaces), and we would like to decide what happens to them. She has already given some garden machinery to her son-in-law that belonged to my dad (we have the invoice). She is also trying to decide what she wants to do with his clothes

How do we go about getting an inventory of his belongings if she won't give us free access to the house? How do we get hold of what is legally ours? How do we stop her from giving away this stuff?

We have everything we need in respect of his investments and accounts. It's just the physical belongings that we don't know how to deal with. She can be a bit awkward but I don't want to get heavy handed with lawyers etc.

Any help will be gratefully received. Thank you.

No it doesn't. It says that she has use of the contents. "Contents" has been defined in the will as "all my furniture, furnishings and household effects". It's not vague.

Thank you. I like this approach.

She has employed a gardener. It's too big for her to do all the mowing. She gave the lawn mower to her son-in-law because his one broke. It was quite new and relatively expensive. My concern is that this is just the tip of the iceberg and she's passing on my dad's things to her family without our permission.

I am absolutely not a lawyer.

How would it go if you said “as executors, we are coming to do an inventory now so that eventually, when we do an inventory upon your passing, we will know exactly what is yours to be transferred directly to your own family.”

She still won’t like it but hey ho.

I assume you don’t like your stepmother and place no value on a good relationship with her. If you do then think about what outcome you want to achieve. I bought a holiday house from someone who had just been widowed. I agreed with her a lump sum for much of the contents and told her not to worry about clearing out the garage. She called me back in tears to say that her stepdaughters had told her she didn’t own the furniture she had chosen with her husband and it wasn’t hers to sell. I’m sure they were legally correct but the way they behaved seemed very cruel to a woman who had just lost her husband of 30 years.