is husband entittled to anything after his fathers death

mrsbadger01

hi, im new to the forum and coming for some advice. my husbands father died about 8 weeks ago. they had not spoken for 5 years. but his father has always said if anything ever happened to him, the business would be his. now my father in law has a biggish business and owned a few houses and land. now does all this go to his wife ( my husband step mother, my husband is the only living blood relative of his dad)
or is my husband entitled to make a claim on anything that belonged to his dad.?
my husband is not a greedy person and doesn't really want to make a claim but im thinking he is entitled to something as he worked with his dad and grew the business until they fell out.
if he is entitled to something how do we go about it. we aren't sure if there is a will as no one has sent us a letter saying there is. my husband has been to see his step mum but nothing was said about a will or anything like that.
any advice would be great thankyou

Valli

http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/wales/relationships_w/relationships_death_and_wills_e/who_can_inherit_if_there_is_no_will___the_rules_of_intestacy.htm

This link explains the rules; your husband needs to ask whether there was a will

theoretica

If there is no will then the intestate rules apply - note that they changed a couple of weeks ago so you will need to look at the old ones. http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/sep/20/wills-inheritance-changes-intestacy-rules

Crabapple

Your first step needs to be finding out if there was a Will. It makes a big difference to what you might do or what your husband might receive.

You can put in an application for a standing search at the Probate Registry and a copy will be sent once Probate has been granted. That's of course a way of finding out without asking the step-mother, which might be the quicker option but perhaps a little more awkward.

If there's no Will then the intestacy rules kick in as mentioned above. By the number of assets you list it seems highly unlikely your husband would not be getting anything from the Estate.

If there is a Will he might be in it so that would be straightforward.

Challenging a Will is complicated and potentially very expensive. There are only very specific grounds you can use. Perhaps in this case as well as the usual capacity issues there might be a case under proprietory estopel, but that's something you'd need some specialist legal advice about.

Mojisola

mrsbadger01 wrote: »

my husband is not a greedy person and doesn't really want to make a claim but im thinking he is entitled to something as he worked with his dad and grew the business until they fell out.

In England and Wales, a person can leave their estate to whoever they want. It doesn't matter what someone said while they were alive or what a relative thinks they might be entitled to, it's what's in the will that counts.

Ziggazee

Unfortunately, your husband is not entitled to anything......unless he has been provided for in his father's Will. The fact that he worked with his dad and grew the business accounts for nothing.

BobQ

Maybe a sensible thing to do might be to ask his step mum if there is anything he can do to help? For example is she running the business? Is anybody?

It might be a tactful way of raising the matter.