Does forthcoming inheritance factor into divorce settlement?

martin2345uk

Thanks everyone. Yeah it’s a horrible situation. Person A is my sister; our mum and her husband didn’t particularly like each other which makes it all the more galling he could get half of her half of the house, but it is what it is I guess!

GDB2222

The wording in the Act is " income, earning capacity, property and other financial resources which each of the parties to the marriage has or is likely to have in the foreseeable future, including in the case of earning capacity any increase in that capacity which it would in the opinion of the court be reasonable to expect a party to the marriage to take steps to acquire".

As you can imagine, there is lots of case law about what "likely to have in the foreseeable future " means, but your sister’s case is pretty clear cut.  

Spendless

This was a question that came up on the Legal Queen recently. Her son often asks questions to her that are put on a facebook reel. I think she does other SM too.

Anyway the answer was 'it depends'. She said that in a divorce they attempted to make sure each parties adequate needs were met, so it might be possible to do that without a recent inheritance being taken into account, however if there wasn't enough money to meet both sides needs, some of it might need to be.

That was the gist of it.