Challenging Will

[Tinogirl]

Not me, but posting with permission from my cousin.

My cousin’s brother-in-law died just after Easter. He was unmarried and did not have children.

His will made during Covid and perfectly executed, paid for through his work, left everything to his best friend’s daughter who was his Goddaughter.

My cousin is annoyed and upset that her daughter who is eighteen months old did not receive an inheritance from her uncle and believes that she would have been included if the BiL had got round to updating will.

She wants to challenge, I don’t think that she has a leg to stand on. Nobody was really dependent on him although he did support his own parents, my cousin’s in-laws.

Her husband, the deceased’s brother wants his parents to challenge but they have refused.

May as well just give the money to the lawyers if you challenge - that's who will end up pocketing it.

IANAL.
I would hope they don't have a leg to stand on.

Nope. No chance. The will is clear and the deceased man had no dependents.

Not a hope. If his will was made when he had capacity then there’s nothing to challenge.

How vulgar. Hopefully they don't have a leg to stand on.

One thing I omitted his Death in Service of about £80,000 is going to his mother, my cousin’s MIL.

As you suspect, I'm pretty sure they have absolutely no legal right to challenge the will, and not really any moral right either. They may FEEL that he might have chosen to leave something to their child, but the fact is that he didn't - they should remember him as a person fondly, and not expect to benefit financially from his death.

Your greedy cousin and her equally grasping husband have no right to the estate. And if they try I hope they lose all of their savings in legal fees and are made to liable to pay any and all the costs of the beneficiary. And neither do they have a claim on the Death in Service payment.

Challenging a will would be very expensive and there appear to be no grounds for a challenge.

I met the deceased and texted him a few times in the months leading up to cousin’s wedding, he seemed a nice bloke and the family is genuinely devastated.

The are of the belief that he wouldn’t have made a will if his employer hadn’t paid for this service and had he got around to changing it he would have either included his niece or made her sole beneficiary.

They are upset that the parent’s money given to their son for a house deposit will now obviously benefit a non related child.

I knew they didn’t stand a chance. I know this is legal and not AIBU but cousin and her husband are nice and good, genuinely. They do feel an injustice though.

I’d say he's had bad advice in the first place really - It’d be usual to write something like “I leave X to any child/ren of my sister and X to my Goddaughter” if he was thinking about leaving anything to his sisters potential descendants when he wrote his will.
Our wills leave provision for potential grandchildren, but none of our kids are anywhere near starting a family.
It may well be that if he’d lived longer he would have included his nieces/nephews but he didn’t, so the only winners here would be the lawyers!

There is nothing here that gives any basis for challenging the will. The fact they are unhappy with the will is irrelevant. Arguments that his niece would have benefited if he had got round to updating his will are also irrelevant. There are only limited grounds under which a will can be challenged and nothing you have said indicates that any of them apply here.

That’s just a guess on their part though. And even if they are right, they can’t just change the will based on that.

My sister is single and doesn’t have children, and plans to remain that way, and I’d never even consider challenging a will if it didn’t include my children! She’s also had financial help from my parents and that money is hers to do with as she likes, not family money my children have a claim to.

Most people don't inherit from uncles or aunts. They need to let this go.

Nasty and grabby. Why would he make provisions for his niece that hadn’t yet been born? My aunt died in January, I’m not making moves to grab any of her estate. People are gross. And selfish. And gross again.

The deceased deliberately did not bequeath anything to his own brother. I can't help wondering why not. That tells a story, doesn't it?

The death-in-service benefit will be paid to whoever the policyholder nominated on the form when the policy was originally set up years ago; in this case it happens to be his mother. Totally normal.

They do feel an injustice though.

Why? Where is the injustice in him choosing to leave his estate to his goddaughter, who is presumably a person he knew and cared about as the child of his best friend. That is not an unusual decision for a single adult - my own son's godfather had made similar provision as a child free adult.

They should be focused on supporting a grieving mother instead of being angry at a 'non related' child who had no say in the bequest.

I imagine most/many people would inherit from aunts/uncles who didn’t have children, surely? Our nephews/nieces will certainly inherit our estate. Who else would we leave it to?

I think the OP’s cousin’s circumstances are a shame and probably aren’t what the deceased would have intended had they given it any thought - but I don’t imagine they’re challengeable, even if money were no object.

I imagine most/many people would inherit from aunts/uncles who didn’t have children, surely? Our nephews/nieces will certainly inherit our estate. Who else would we leave it to?

I have a slightly complex family situation in that due to a family estrangement I have a niece and a nephew I have never met, and not likely to. They are not going to be getting any money from me, not least because they have family wealth from their DM.

I have another nephew who will receive some money, but I'm planning to give a fair chunk to charities. If, of course, there's any left after care costs.

The are of the belief that he wouldn’t have made a will if his employer hadn’t paid for this service and had he got around to changing it he would have either included his niece or made her sole beneficiary.

There's a word for this, and it's tenuous.

1. (of a connection, association, etc.) very weak or slight; not strong or secure

He might have done this and he might have done that. The facts are that he didn't.

There is a very clear list of who can claim for not being a beneficiary of a Will.
Look it up and it will list, spouses, civil partners, any children they have, and those financially dependent on the person who has died.

I have a child free Aunt I haven't seen in ages. Very wealthy too. I'd be amazed if I stand to inherit anything. No rift, we just live 100s of miles apart and neither has made any effort.

If he was close to his brother maybe he might have made provision for a niece, once she was born, but I suspect if that were the case the brother would have been in the will.

Either way, I doubt any one except the lawyers would benefit from a challenge.

This is a very good point. A single person with no children making a will might very well leave his estate to his own family - his parents, his siblings or his nieces and nephews. It's easy and normal to word the will so that if he has no nephews and nieces at the time he makes the will but might have in the future that can be allowed for. If he had professional advice and didn't choose to leave anything to his family at all, that has to suggest he considered it and decided not to. Maybe he thought they were already very well provided for and his goddaughter wasn't. Maybe there were other reasons. At any rate, I think his family just have to suck it up.

Going back to the deposit, if the deceased's Mum has received his death in service benefit, has that not returned all or most of the deposit to the family?

Yes, I suppose my ‘Who else would we leave it to?’ does hang on two things - that we are in contact with all the family and that we are (well, strictly speaking, I am) the youngest in our families so not much point leaving it to siblings, God willing.🤣

It is interesting that the deceased in this case didn’t leave anything to his sibling(s), but perhaps it’s a similar situation of being the youngest and assuming the natural order of things. We don’t know his age, but if it was a very young man making a will just for paperwork’s sake, rather than feeling the need, friends can seem all important and one can romantically assume that one is guaranteed old age?

(Shall I be the first to say that perhaps the god-daughter is actually his biological child, following a torrid affair?😲🤣)

I can’t stand my niece, I’d leave everything to the local cat shelter before I’d leave it to her.

If this man had his will made professionally the person advising him will have broached the subject of leaving money to family, even to family members who may not have been born at the time. Interesting that he didn’t leave anything to his own sibling.

Mine and DH’s will provides for any living grandchildren at the time we die, even though we don’t have any grandchildren yet.