People have a great level of freedom to leave their estates as they choose and disappointed relatives must overcome a high hurdle to successfully challenge a will. Recently, the daughter of a woman who made a will leaving her entire estate to one of her sons failed in her challenge to the will’s validity.
The woman’s previous wills had left her estate equally to her three children. However, she had written to her daughter and her younger son in 2015, threatening to disinherit them unless they showed her more respect and ‘mended bridges’ with her elder son. In 2018 she made a new will in favour of her elder son. She died in 2021 at the age of 94, leaving an estate valued at around £1.1 million. Her daughter argued that the will was invalid for lack of testamentary capacity and want of knowledge or approval, or by reason of undue influence or fraudulent calumny on the part of the elder son.
The judge heard evidence that the woman had visited her solicitor alone. The solicitor had recorded that she had seemed mentally sharp and aware of what she was doing. When the solicitor had asked why she wished to disinherit her daughter and her younger son, she had said they ‘were not visiting her and not showing any interest’. She had left a letter with the will, explaining that she was disinheriting them because none of the conditions in the letter she had sent in 2015 had been fulfilled and nothing had changed.
The judge found that, although the woman was showing symptoms of dementia by 2020, she had had testamentary capacity when the will was made two years earlier. The letter she had written in 2015 and the letter included with the will were clear in what they said. The judge rejected any assertion that the elder brother had been dishonest or that he had assisted the woman with making the will. The will’s validity was upheld.
