Finding if someone's been left money in a will?

elsien

A relative is getting divorced, his wife has refused mediation and her demands are getting a bit silly (wanting half of assets from before they were married etc.) He suspects she's not being entirely truthful about her assets in the hope of getting a larger share from the divorce. He believes that she was left a reasonable amount of money when her mother died recently which has since been stashed away but she is saying she has nothing. Is there any legal way of finding out what the will said and what she may have been left?
He's not trying to avoid his responsibilities and fully accepts he will pay for the children and a reasonable amount for her while she looks into retraining etc, but he doesn't want to be taken for a complete mug if she's telling porkies.

Pee

The bad news is she might be entitled to assets he owned before the marriage. He needs to take proper legal advice on this as it sounds like there is quite a lot at stake.

The good news is a will becomes a public document if Probate is needed, usually if there are assets over £20,000 and you can get a copy by writing to the York probate registry with the name and date of death and address of the person who died. If he doesn't know the date the month and year will be fine. It depends on how common the surname is. It doesn't need to be the full address, but the more information the better.

elsien

He's just got a solicitor, thankfully.
I think he's been totally wrong-footed because he really believed they were going to try to be amicable and go the mediation route, and when he turned up to the first mediation session, she walked out before the session even started. He's since realised that she's been going through all his papers, and trying to make him look bad by not telling him about school events that are important to the kids and it looks like it's going to get nasty. Which I suppose was always on the cards, but you do live in hope that people can at least attempt to be reasonable human beings, however naive that may sound.

Savvy_Sue

He has the right to ask the schools to send him copies of all correspondence sent home from school, including invitations to events and to parents evenings.