A daughter had been the sole carer for her mother for years. She dealt with the dementia, the illness, the final decline. After her mother passed, the will was read. It named the daughter as executor.
But it left her nothing. The entire estate, a six-figure sum, was to be divided between two other siblings who had not been in contact for years. The daughter’s job was to administer the estate for their benefit. A final, thankless task.
The Mechanism of the Breakdown The family was broken by this. The trust was gone. The problem was structural, rooted in events years earlier. The will had been changed just one year before the mother’s official dementia diagnosis. This immediately raises a legal question: did she have testamentary capacity? Was she of sound mind when she signed a document that disinherited her primary carer?
Challenging a will on these grounds is possible. A claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 might also succeed. But the process is adversarial and expensive. Contesting a will can cost £20,000 to £50,000 in legal fees, sometimes more. That money comes out of the estate, burning through the very inheritance everyone is fighting over. The daughter was put in a position where she had to consider suing the estate she was legally bound to protect.
Prevention Is Not Complicated This is where planning matters. A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) for both Health and Welfare, and for Property and Financial Affairs, should have been in place much earlier. An LPA confirms who the trusted decision-maker is while a person is still alive. It gives that person oversight.
While an LPA doesn't stop someone changing their will, the solicitor overseeing such a radical change with an elderly client should follow the ‘golden rule’. This means obtaining a medical opinion on capacity at the time the will is made. A properly managed process would have created a clear record, either supporting the change or preventing it. It would have protected the mother's true wishes and spared the family this outcome.
These situations burn families to the ground. The cost is not just financial. The conversations are hard, but they are necessary. If you recognise any part of this story, we should talk.
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Written by Sean Kiani, Estate Planner at Inheritance Made Simple. Sean writes and reviews the firm's guidance on estate planning, wills, trusts and inheritance tax, and works with families across Bournemouth, Poole, Dorset and Central London. Verify Sean's Society of Will Writers membership listing.