Claim for Financial Provision in a Will

Date: December 2007

These claims can be made where the deceased person leaves a Will and also where he or she does not leave a Will and where the intestacy rules will then state what should happen to the Estate.

Either situation may result in a deserving Claimant not receiving anything or not receiving sufficient out of the Estate and certain designated classes of people such as a Widow or Co-habitee are entitled to bring a claim for reasonable financial provision.

In one recent case handled by Simon Wolfe, a Widower had taken into his house a teenaged girl who was being neglected by her family. They lived together happily as father and daughter for the next 20 or more years but when the Widower died, he did not leave a Will and his Estate automatically passed to his adult son. Soon after the Widower's death, the son died and his Estate automatically passed to his own daughter who was only 2 or 3 years old.

The Claimant, who was due to receive nothing from the Widower's Estate as the law stood, then claimed provision from the Widower's Estate.

As the Claimant had been treated by the Widower as if she had been his daughter, even though she was not, the law permitted her to bring a claim for financial provision out of the Widower's Estate, as if she had been his daughter, failing which she was going to have to move out of the house which had been her home for some 20 years and fend for herself.

As she only had very limited earnings, this was going to be extremely harsh for her and a compromise was eventually agreed, under which the property was to be sold but the Claimant was to receive a share of the proceeds of sale to set her up for the future.

For more information contact Simon Wolfe

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