Analysis
Joe Sargeant (the deceased) died on 10 May 2005 leaving a will dated 20 February 2002. He left a surviving spouse, Audrey Sargeant (who was known as Mary), and two children, Jeff and Jane. By the will, he left his guns and fishing equipment to Jeff and the balance of his personal chattels and the benefit of a life policy worth £75,000 to Mary. The remainder of his estate was left to his trustees on discretionary trust. The class was limited to Mary, Jane and Jane’s issue. His estate was valued at just over £3.2m.
Mary brought a claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependents) Act 1975. Proceedings were not issued until 20 July 2016, over ten years after the grant of probate. It was therefore substantially out of time, and required permission to be granted under s2 of the 1975 Act. The matter was listed for determination as a preliminary issue.
Held
- 1) There was an arguable case, if the claim proceeded for provision. It was not necessary to decide whether Mary’s claim would be a strong one, and the court did not do so.
- 2) Even if Mary were able to surmount the hurdle of showing that she had not understood at the time of the will that she was not owner of half of the matrimonial assets and had only an interest as a discretionary beneficiary, it was impossible to believe that she was not fully aware of that by at least the middle of 2011, and similarly impossible to believe that she was not aware by then that she only had a fixed income available to her.
- 3) Mary had not made out a sufficient case that it was right and just to permit the claim to proceed. It was not a case in which any material facts had been concealed from Mary or where she had been misled. It was not made necessary by any supervening event outside her control, either an unexpected external event or some act or conduct for which Jane or the trustees were responsible.
- 4) Mary had taken her own decision to continue to work within the arrangements provided for by the will rather than to explore whether she had any option available to vary them, in the full knowledge of the financial difficulties she was under, and maintained that decision over a very long period.
- 5) The trustees, and Jane in particular, had continued to manage the assets, and Jane and her family had a legitimate expectation that they would eventually inherit them in accordance with the will and Joe’s wishes. Given the very extensive delay, the operative cause of which was Mary’s own failure to take any steps to explore whether she could disturb those arrangements, it would not be right to give her permission to do so now.
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