Rising numbers of families are becoming embroiled in inheritance disputes – with many cases ending up in court.
As many as 10,000 people in England and Wales are disputing wills every year, and data reveals the number of disputes being heard by the High Court has risen from 384 in 2022 to 391 in 2023.
Last year saw an increase in contentious probate disputes, with 122 cases compared to 117 in 2022. These disputes are often centred around the validity of or distribution under a will. Another 182 cases in the High Court related to the provision for dependants, where individuals claimed that their financial dependence on the deceased entitled them to a larger share of the estate.
Alison Neate, Head of Professional Liability at Smith Partnership, outlines why the pandemic could be set to create a flood of new claims.
Victoria Townsend, who heads up the Smith Partnership’s contentious team, outlines why so many disputes are occurring. She said:
“Increasingly, we’re also finding that we get a number of disputes between executors and beneficiaries. There may be claims that the executors aren’t dealing with matters properly, or are acting in breach of duty. Some may be accused of not paying money out, or of demonstrating a conflict of interest. Executors might also be accused of not acting in the best interests of the estate. These are the types of things we see day-to-day.
In order to avoid the issues faced with probate, there must be a focus on informing people about how to properly write a will. I think a lot of it has got to do with people being properly informed, going to a professional to write your will, being clear with family members as to what your intentions are, or just knowing really what may happen if you don’t do this properly.”
Neate said that here are more cases “coming out of the woodwork” in terms of wills that were executed during lockdown, linked to laws that came into play around COVID time to deal with witnessing wills remotely. She added:
“There’s an ongoing case where an elderly lady made a will through a solicitor during the COVID period, and there is a question as to whether or not she had mental capacity to do so. Just weeks beforehand she had received a provisional diagnosis of dementia and was a patient of a Memory Clinic.
There was a meeting in person, which in itself was unusual in early COVID times. It appears to have been a very brief meeting. There is something termed The Tactless But Golden Rule, which means that where a person making a will is an elderly and vulnerable person, the will writer should be making sure that they get some medical evidence or opinion if they are at all concerned about mental capacity.
In this case, that didn’t seem to happen, even though there were clear red flags. Basic questions should have been asked by the will writer about their client’s mental status. I suspect the will writer was thinking, ‘How on earth do we deal with this at the moment?’, considering Lockdown and the fact that the NHS was in complete disarray, focusing as it did on the COVID emergency.”
