Supreme Court Ilott judgement.

https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2015-0203.html

http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2017/17.html

In a nutshell, the supreme court has upheld the original ruling by DJ Million and rejected the quantum ruling that would have seen Ilott receive some £165,000.

How does this affect future claims ?

It doesn't - Although an adult child has the right to bring a claim, he/she still has to satisfy all parts of Sec.3 of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975. Just because there is an "expectation", it does not follow that there is a right to any inheritance.

for a summary(before the ruling) BBC breakfast at 1:39 cover this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08ht6rb/breakfast-15032017


Remember this case was not about the claim being valid or not that had already been decided, but about the size of the provision.

Yorkshireman99 wrote: »

It does affect future claims becuase it does offer some clarification of the law albeit the the circumstances in Ilott were very, very unusual. Also it might encourage the Government to revise the currect legislation.

As you say, the case is almost sui generis, so its long-term impact may be small.

One thing I found pretty distasteful was the Appeal Court structuring the payment that they decided such that it would retain access to benefits. If you did that yourself, using (say) a DoV to modify a legacy so that you could continue to claim benefits that would be stopped by a simple capital payment, you would be staring straight down the barrels of a deprivation of assets action. The Supreme Court judgement doesn't see to focus on that particular point; its argument is rather different, in that it says that the district judge's quantum could be spent on household necessities without affecting benefits anyway. But structuring judgements with an eye on benefits is pretty nasty.

Ganga wrote: »

Without reading the whole judgement,did the charities get all the money and the estranged daughter get nothing?

No, the court didn't have the power to decide that, the issue wasn't whether she had a claim, it was about whther the decision made by the CofA to overturn the original judgment was correct; i/.e. had the original Judge made a mistake either in how in interpreted the law or the facts. The Supreme court found thathe had not, so his original decision was reinstated.

This means that she gets the £50K she was originally awarded, less any costs she may have to pay.

The judgment does mention that an agreement had ben reached so I suspect that the charities agreed not to seek costs from her even thouh they 'won', as they pursued the case in part because they through it had wider implications for them.

Her own legal team were working pro bono so she won't have to to pay them