Stipulations in a will?

[malovitt]

One of my relatives is making a rough draft of her will before she goes to a solicitor.
Her son is heavily drug dependent; he recently came into £6,000 from another inheritance which he got through in 10 days.
Can she put stipulations in her will, saying something along the lines of he can only inherit his share/ income from rental properties /investments if he has been drug free for x number of years? And this fact has to be verified by a drug councillor/social worker?
She doesn't want to leave him out but knows if he comes into a fair whack of money suddenly, it would be squandered on drugs or he will possibly o'd.

He has drug convictions aplenty and a long documented history of heroin abuse with stays in rehab etc so he couldn't deny it.

Could he contest it if she put stipulations in?
Any advice?

Conditional legacies aren't uncommon. Is your relative in England? However, rather than stipulating drug-free (which I think is open to too much interpretation), she might want to withhold his inheritance until he reaches a certain age. If she made it that he would only inherit once he hits 40 or 50 it might be the incentive he needs to stay alive long enough to receive it.

Yes, she's in England.

Her son is already 46.

Maybe I will suggest that she puts his share in trust with his other reliable sibling as trustee and that it cannot be accessed before he is 60 unless his sibling agrees that he is capable of behaving responsibly? It that feasible, do you think?

It is quite a considerable sum of money.

If it's a lot of money, it's really one for the professionals to organise. Making a sibling responsible for determining if their brother's behaviour is acceptable or not - having them acting as judge and jury on whether he gets some money - is very thorny stuff that could cause untold problems. Of course, if she left him nothing at all, the remaining siblings are going to get leaned on for cash. One alternative could be to bequeath the son an income rather than a lump sum. Limits the damage, isn't conditional on his behaviour and he can't say he got nothing. Always the possibility she'll outlive him, of course.

Thanks for that.