Help pls advise on contesting a will on hearsay

localhero

Kinkybootz, I am afraid your uncle may not have been well advised when he drew up his Will. In most cases where a couple have an 'agreement' of the sort you've described, they draw up their Wills at the same time, so that whoever dies second the estate is split in the way they've agreed.

As Nicki correctly says, the Will should have been drawn up so that his share of the estate was safeguarded to prevent precisely what has happened, among other possible detrimental outcomes.

Your only hope I'm afraid is that your uncle's wife did make a Will at the same time as your uncle, and you can show that the later Will is invalid because she didn't have the capacity to make a new Will at the time. In which case the earlier Will will stand.

If there is no earlier Will in your favour, then sadly the laws of intestacy will favour her own blood relatives and you will be worse off.

I think your best bet is to contact the solicitor who drafted up your uncle's Will to see if they drew up a Will for her at the same time. If they have you may be lucky, if they didn't then I think sadly you may be out of luck. I'm not sure about the six year rule, my own professional indemnity insurers expect me to keep my file notes indefinitely, so the 6 year rule might be AFTER the client has died. Whether the solicitor has access to the file or even still exists, though is another matter.

Unfortunately the situation you find yourself in is very common, as in my experience couples often ignore the risks and leave their estates to each other without thinking ahead about the various possible outcomes.

Good luck.

localhero

kinkyboots wrote:

The gardener has said she changed her will in 2006 just after he started working for her.

Actually, looking at your original post more carefully, suggests that the wife did make an earlier Will, so the question is was this the one made at the same time as your uncle or slightly later as per the original agreement?

You will definitely need to do a bit of detective work here to try and find out what this Will said. I strongly suspect that she did make it at the same time as your uncle, and the later one was a dodgy DIY job.

I would definitely pursue this one, as it sounds very dodgy to me. Don't be intimidated by the gardener, and definitely keep a note of the conversation you had with him, as the Probate Registry may be very interested to learn what exactly he shredded. People in their right mind don't give £50k to a new employee! :eek:
Good luck.

Willo1972

Go and see a Solicitor immediately as any proceedings must be issued within 6 months of the date of issue of the Grant of Probate

localhero

Willo1972 wrote:

Go and see a Solicitor immediately as any proceedings must be issued within 6 months of the date of issue of the Grant of Probate

Whilst the OP makes efforts to contact the solicitor who drafted the original Will(s), a cheaper and simpler course of action would be for the OP to enter a caveat at the probate registry, as this would only cost £15.