Do children have any legal right to see a deceased parent's will ?

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Via a random Google search of my father's name by a 3rd party I came to be informed this Sunday of an obit for him. Two more links marking his death have been found, both forums relating to his former profession.

He died late November last year. Via the links of random internet people having a chatter I have established cause of death. Brian cancer.

Again via information in the links my sister and I have tracked down his final resting place.

I believe the reason why we were not informed by either my father, nor his former mistress, now wife, was in order to facilitate disinheriting us. Most likely as punishment for refusing to accept all his choices as always somebody else's fault. He abandoned us at 11, 14 and 16.

I had always thought that unlike Italy, where I live, in England you can leave your assets as randomly as you like. And as an estranged child I have always banked on being disinherited. But somebody has sent me a link to some kind of family act made in 1975. So I think there was a deliberate intent to delay our knowledge of his death, and leave us to find out via internet based chatter, as and when it happened.

As I understand it in order to resist a challenge my father will have been advised to either makes trust, or make it very clear in his will why he was cutting out his 3 children.

I want to see those reasons in black and white. I cannot sit here in tears with "if onlies, what ifs, maybes" about his emotional connection for us any longer, if, as the context suggests, he deliberatly left us to be the last to know, for motives of exacting belated will-based punishment for not letting him off the hook for letting us down so badly.

All we ever wanted was a sorry. She can have the money, and my late grandparents' money. I hope it keeps her warm at night.

But I want to see my father's reasons. To allow his final words regarding me to pierce the bubble of pain and let me grieve no more for a man who dismissed me in his life, and death.

I don't live in the UK. I will have to do this from here, becuase my UK based sister is crushed by how we found out, and my relationship with my brother is untenable.

Do I have any right to see his will ? And if I do, where do I even start ?

I know the UK doesn't have a notary manage and publish the will like they do here. I know somebody acts as executor. But if that is his former mistress/now wife.. based on how she body blocked me as a teenager, so I couldn't even sit next to my father, I can't see things being made easy for me.

Your Dad and his woman are arseholes. Arseholes don't tend to change. Arseholes tend to have warped thinking and behaviour.

You are better off having them out of your life.

Life isn't a Disney film, good people don't usually win, life is simply unfair.

I don't know if I am heartbroken.

I am so many different things, sometimes all at once, and nothing will sit still in my heart and head long enough for me to be able to say "so this is how I actually feel officially"

I don't think a councillor would be useful even if we shared a common mother tongue, depending on the appointment time she could be getting an entirely different set of "this is how I feels", all getting replaced ten minutes later with a new lot.

It's like a fecking "feeling kaleidoscope" in my head.

I was all cold and steely a couple of hours ago. Now I am back to hot sobbing mess who wants to make a beautiful legacy for her father, to give to her son.

Please, just tell me that's normal. Nobody mentioned "feelings kaleidoscope" head in all the nice grief links people have been sending me. Which all seem to be abut nice tidy steps. I can do nice tidy steps. I want that sort of grief. This kind sucks.

When I had counselling, for something completely different, the main thing I got from it was that it was normal and reasonable to feel as I did. That allowed me to accept those feelings, rather than to feel bad about feeling them, and move on. The feelings are stills in there somewhere, but I don't dwell on them.

So I'd say that counselling might help you.

And of course your grief doesn't fit the nice tidy steps. Most grief that is written about is for people who weren't estranged. The complexity of your grief must be huge.

complexity of your grief must be huge.

Thank you. I suppose that should have been obvious to me.

I was so sure the preceeding loss, the preceeding pain would be like pre paid credit in the account where the grief direct debit would draw funds. That it would be simple, and I might even be left with spare change.

Complexity went right over my head as a possibility.

I had psychotherapy. It really helped.
Don't underestimate the feeling you feel that are all tied up in loss and abandonment.
It is ok to feel sad that he wasn't a better person and that you didn't get the dad you deserved xxx

Probate as far as I know doesn't have a time constrain, so it could be three or four years down the line until it is completed and put on the register. Whilst search wills often they are a few months after death - but not always and I have found one three years later.

Sorry

I get the impression that losing someone who you had a troubled relationship with can be harder than losing someone you loved and was a 'good person'.

You might feel relief, but then guilt about that feeling of relief and confusion because 'aren't you meant to feel sad?' Being sent information about 'normal grief' is may make you feel worse. Your grief might be full of contradictions, made even more complex by continued existence of the OW and what happened to your father's money. Knowing she is still out there means you might not feel you have complete closure. The money adds another layer to what you might feel - because everyone pretends that it doesn't matter, and that you should be the bigger person - but it does matter.

It matters for many reasons -

because its horrible seeing someone else benefit from a nasty situation

because it would be nice to be acknowledged with an inheritance because it might bring a message 'I know I behaved badly deep down, I couldn't admit it in life, but can in death'

or just because it would be helpful.

I'm sure this only scratched the surface of what you could be feeling. I've never been through anything like you have and I think few people have.

I am completely nonplussed by this whole thread ! Your father left your mother and married the OW...not exactly an unusual state of affairs... This happened a very very long time ago. You refuse to accept this relationship (you continue or refer to her as his mistress)... Your refusal to accept the relationship means you remain estranged from your father and your step mother....yet you are hacked off that you didn't know he died and have been cut out of the will..have I got that right ?

Well talk about missing the point. Which as the op has said is not entirely about money, but more about wanting to see whether there has been a justification for abandonment, financial AND emotional.

The previous poster who said that grief can be complex when it relates to a difficult or complex relationship is bang on target.

It must be a shock, no matter, to discover online that one's father has died, and it seems to me that the op is trying to see if there's a message from beyond the grave in as much as a will might explain more about reasons for disinheriting, if that's the case.

Even in your teens, being left by a parent hurts. The hurt can be revisited when the parent who left then dies. There will lots of things unsaid. Plus the op and her siblings will have been left with a parent at the time dealing with her own reactions to the father leaving.

Sometimes people do selfish things and expect others to get over it well not everyone can, no need to be like that to OP who was an innocent harmed by others selfishness.

I didn't realise there had been any other messages posted. Sorry.

Pico2

If MN had a trophy hammer for the most nails being hit squarely on the head in a single post... you'd win. Thank you for creating insight for me, so I understand the mess in my own head better.

I've found another reason why I think the will mattered. With no death certificate, nothing offical to say it's real... the denial, it is so so strong. And it has a valid point in some respects. Saying things like "well all you've got is three poxy websites with Internet randoms saying he's dead... not exactly impressive is it ? Oh the Internet said it so it must be real! You sound like a twat, have you never heard of making sure you have reliable source before you believe everything you hear ?" It's a fair point. Even the name of the cemetery came from a third party, who got the info from the same person every other single source got every scrap of their information from.

I can't lose him three times. I just can't. So I am pushing back hard at the idea that "it isn't true until there is something offical in my hand". But the denial makes good points on paper. Even though it is an insane idea that anybody would pull a hoax of this kind. Except ....canoe man, his kids didn't know. So it can happen.

I was doing so well as well. Getting used to a sea of blue living inside my chest. Then a little goldfish of hope that it wasn't real came swimming along. Which was lovely, because ..there was the shiny possibility of dad not being dead suddenly on the table. But it's not lovely now cos the bugger has grown into a massive koi overnight and is making me not know what to think.

I don't think he would do that to us. Not pretend to be dead as some kind of horrible test. But then I didn't think he would abandon us, or paint himself as a victim of us, or walk away unless everything was on his terms 24/7, or airbrush us utterly from his life, or leave no instructions to at least let us know he died so we didn't find out third hand from Internet randoms.

I always believed that one day he would call and say sorry I hurt you all so badly. Which would unlock the door between us. While it wouldn't wipe away years of pain, it could have been a start. But that never happened.

So what do I know about what he would or wouldn't do to us, or for us.

I wasn't worried about the denial bit. Thought that would be an easier one to pin down, batter with a brick and dispose of. But it is sneaker and far more insidious than I gave it credit for. You can get horribly attached to the shiny goldfish of hope in your blue sea of sad. I'd rather believe he'd do a(nother) terrible thing to us, rather than believe he is really gone.

I'm going to get this thread moved to another board. I wandered off the legal side at the speed of light quite early on. Not sure it is much use here for anybody else.