Aunty has stolen the inheritance

jonnydeppiwish!

Are you sure they were not legally married?

If they were and he had no will, surely everything would be hers anyway?

How old are the children?

Thrugelmir

housea said:

They may have had a Buddhist wedding in thailand which is not legal.  

Such weddings can be legalised and therefore be recognised in other countries. "May" suggests that there's clarity still to be obtained. 

Grumpy_chap

This might help by absolute clarity on various relationships.

There is the OP
There is the OP's children.  I assume the OP's biological children and not the OP's step-children.
There is the children's father - is he also the former partner of the OP?
There is the father's girlfriend
There is the aunt - is that the father's sister, or some other relation that is still an aunt, or an older female unrelated but colloquially referred to as "aunt"?
I assume the father's girlfriend and the "aunt" are not actually one and the same?

The father owned a property in Portugal but rented in the UK.  Was the property in Portugal solely the father's?
If the father rented in the UK, did he really have much by way of assets in the UK?  If there was only money in the bank, and there was a girlfriend on the scene, they may have had pretty much everything in joint accounts so that would become hers when the father passed.

elsien

Also, where was the father’s primary residence, here or Portugal?
When they emptied the flat and passed information over to the aunt what did they give her? Was there any financial paperwork in there that would give an idea of any UK bank accounts and assets? 

Do they know who the pensions were with? 

SevenOfNine

I'm not recommending this course of action, nor this company as I have no experience of either, but it may be worth investigation/consideration.  https://www.inheritancedisputes.co.uk 

Be mindful that the words "no win, no fee" don't mean that you may not have costs awarded against you if you lose. (By "you" of course I mean the offspring.)

Lloyds Bank, for example, will pay out up to £50k on sight of the just the death cert & ID of the person who has it. A disclaimer is signed to protect the bank, so if aunt had that she'd be able to clear out his bank account/s, quite a few have a payout 'limit' of that surprising size.

Pension is a different matter, a few more hoops to jump through before the provider will pay it out.

Marcon

housea said:

They may have had a Buddhist wedding in thailand which is not legal.  He died 3 years ago, they kept checking probate but nothing so contacted their aunt to find out what was going on. All bank accounts have been emptied and house in Portugal has just been left. His girlfriend lives in a different country.  They need to know where to go to find out how their aunt got permission to deal with everything without probate but are finding it tricky.  That's about all we know

UK probate may not have been needed if the property was in Portugal, and he had few assets in the UK. Assuming you are talking about UK bank accounts, do you know for certain whether these had any cash in them and if so, roughly how much? Which country does the girlfriend live in - assuming she was a girlfriend and not his wife at the time he died?