INHERITANCE (PROVISION FOR FAMILY AND DEPENDANTS) ACT 1975.

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  • Created by: domlpool
  • Created on: 25-12-20 20:18

Unlike many continental jurisdictions, under English law a Testator may dispose of his property by, will, however s/he wishes.  Close relatives have no legal right to inherit any fixed proportion of the estate.

Certain classes of people may have the right to make an application to the court under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 as amended by the Inheritance Trustees’ Powers Act 2014.  Under this Act the court has the power to make provision for an applicant if it feels that reasonable financial provision has not been made for the applicant out of the deceased's estate.

An application can be made under the Act on the basis either:

(a)      that the deceased's will did not make reasonable financial provision

OR

(b)      that the distribution of the deceased's estate under the intestacy rules fails to make reasonable financial provision.

Making a Claim Under the Act

1.          Time limits

·         6 months from the grant, unless the court use their discretion to extend this time limit.

·         standing search

2.       Who can make an application?

An applicant must show that s/he comes within one of the categories in s.1 of the Act.

Note the categories of applicants carefully.

They are:

·         deceased’s spouse or civil partner

·         a former spouse of the deceased who has not remarried of former civil partner of the deceased who has not formed a subsequent civil partnership

·         a cohabitant ( a person who for two years immediately before the deceased’s death was living in the same household as the deceased as husband or wife of the deceased) or a person who for two years immediately before the deceased’s death was living in the same household as the deceased as the civil partner of the deceased

·         a child of the deceased ( includes illegitimate and adopted children. Can be any age but an able bodied self-supporting child is less likely to be successful in an application, but see later for recent cases.)

·         a person treated as a child of the family. The provision includes any person who was treated by the deceased as a child of the family in relation to any family in which the deceased at any time stood in the role of a parent.  This will allow claims by a person treated as a child of the deceased even where the family consisted of just the applicant and the deceased.

·         any person who immediately before the death of the deceased was being maintained by the deceased either wholly or in part. A person may qualify as being maintained by the deceased, if the deceased made a substantial contribution to that person’s reasonable needs other than for full valuable consideration under an arrangement of a commercial nature. This means that a person claiming under the dependant’s category, no longer needs to show that the deceased contributed more to the relationship than the applicant,

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