Legal right to estranged bothers estate?

PIPPOL92

For reasons stemming from the winding up of my late mothers estate, I am estranged from my sister and brother, it has now been about 6 years and we have not spoken in that time, it happened and was related to my giving up everything to become my mothers full-time live in carer as my mother had dementia, she passed away in 2019.

Suddenly out of the blue last week, I received an email from my sisters husband, to say my brother had, had a fall while on holiday in Australia and was seriously ill in Hospital in Sydney, this was then closely followed by another email stating my brother had passed away.
I know my brother had a will and my sister is an executor along with her husband, my sister has previous for getting people, namely my mother to change her will in favour of her 2 children, I have evidence that this did occur.
I know before the estrangement I did feature in my bothers will and I now of course fear my sister has influenced my brother to change his will especially as I gather my sister and brother have been extremely close, during the 6 years.
My brother never married and has no children or partner, he has various pots of financial investments and has a 3 bedroomed, Grade 2 listed property which is part of an barn conversion complex, owned outright.

My question is am I entitled to receive part of my late brothers estate and there is property inside his house which is actually mine? I know this whole scenario is going to be problematic, especially knowing what happened before and my sister and her husband were executers to my mother's estate then and I personally didn't get financially recompensed for money I had willingly put into my mothers property, after having been told I would be recompensed from the estate when the time came.
If I have been removed from my brothers will or left a derisory amount of money with knowing my brothers estate is valued at above £400,000K plus.

DE_612183

you can challenge the will - but unless you can prove he was coerced or not of sound mind there is not much chance of anything coming your way.

My initial view of reading this is whilst it's sad, perhaps you should have done more in the 6 years to repair the relationship.

PIPPOL92

While it's very easy to say I should have done more to repair the relationship, for that you have to have the same interest of the other involved parties, there is a huge amount of background info related to this saga and there's not the time divulge everything.

Woodstok2000

PIPPOL92 said:

While it's very easy to say I should have done more to repair the relationship, for that you have to have the same interest of the other involved parties, there is a huge amount of background info related to this saga and there's not the time divulge everything.

In that case you probably need to accept that what's in the will is what's going to happen (as with your mother). You may not like it or agree with it,but those are his stated wishes and unless you have solid evidence he's been  coerced there is not much chance of changing it, and anything you do will involve lawyers and be very expensive.

GrubbyGirl_2

You admit you were estranged from your brother so I am surprised that you are surprised he has changed his will to remove you in favour of the sibling he was close to.

I have been estranged from one of my brothers for 10 years since my mother died.  Because of that I have made a will to make sure he cannot get anything from me when I die.  I've even stated that if all my beneficiaries die before me then the lot goes to charity instead.  There is also a witnessed letter with my will explaining why just in case he tries to challenge it.

If you haven't tried to repair your relationship then why should you inherit anything from him?  You just need to chase what you state is yours though I don't understand why you haven't done that in the last 6 years, but if it's yours then it should be returned to you

lincroft1710

You have no "right" to any part of your brother's estate, unless you were dependent upon him. English law does not make it incumbent upon people to leave part of their estate to their nearest relatives.


As far as I was aware I was the nearest living relative to someone who died. Apart from a couple of modest bequests to neighbours, the bulk of the estate was left to someone I did not know, but strangely lived fairly close to my relative's former place of work  (they had retired over 30 years ago and had lived about 20 miles from work since the 1960s). The will was made only a year or so before their death and from speaking to the solicitors concerned, it appeared there was no coercion. I had no grounds to and no desire to challenge the will. It was their wishes. So be it.


Just let it be, it will cause more upset (to you) trying to challenge the will.

soolin

Obviously none of us know what happened to destroy your relationship, but just on the basis that you’d had nothing to do with your brother for 6 years suggests it wouldn’t be at all surprising for you to have not been mentioned as a beneficiary in the will.

Why would you think that after 6 years of estrangement you would be entitled to expect any inheritance ? 

GrumpyDil

From what I can see OP hasn't seen their brother's will so doesn't know whether or not they are included in the will.

That said I had a falling out with my sister over a parent's will some 15 years ago and I absolutely don't expect to be in her will, other than a specific clause making it clear that she has deliberately not included me.

ian1246

PIPPOL92 said:

For reasons stemming from the winding up of my late mothers estate, I am estranged from my sister and brother, it has now been about 6 years and we have not spoken in that time, it happened and was related to my giving up everything to become my mothers full-time live in carer as my mother had dementia, she passed away in 2019.

Suddenly out of the blue last week, I received an email from my sisters husband, to say my brother had, had a fall while on holiday in Australia and was seriously ill in Hospital in Sydney, this was then closely followed by another email stating my brother had passed away.
I know my brother had a will and my sister is an executor along with her husband, my sister has previous for getting people, namely my mother to change her will in favour of her 2 children, I have evidence that this did occur.
I know before the estrangement I did feature in my bothers will and I now of course fear my sister has influenced my brother to change his will especially as I gather my sister and brother have been extremely close, during the 6 years.
My brother never married and has no children or partner, he has various pots of financial investments and has a 3 bedroomed, Grade 2 listed property which is part of an barn conversion complex, owned outright.

My question is am I entitled to receive part of my late brothers estate and there is property inside his house which is actually mine? I know this whole scenario is going to be problematic, especially knowing what happened before and my sister and her husband were executers to my mother's estate then and I personally didn't get financially recompensed for money I had willingly put into my mothers property, after having been told I would be recompensed from the estate when the time came.
If I have been removed from my brothers will or left a derisory amount of money with knowing my brothers estate is valued at above £400,000K plus.

With all due respect, why should you be entitled to inherit a single penny from someone who was functionally a complete stranger to you? You've had no relationship whatsoever with him for 6 years, whilst your sister's remained family to him - yet your now essentially accusing the sister of financial abuse or fraud (With no evidence) at the fear your brother's cut you out of the will in favour of his family member he maintained a relationship with?

That's certainly how it will be portrayed by the sisters legal team in any legal dispute you may raise over that will - and if you loose that dispute, its you who will be paying for both your and your sisters legal costs.

Any assets of yours your brother had in his estate are legally yours, but your going to have an uphill battle proving both their existence and ownership.