When a person dies and leaves an inheritance, the usual thing is that his or her relatives receive the assets according to what has been established. established in his will. However, when one of the heirs does not agree with the distribution, conflicts may arise that end up in court. This is exactly what happened to a woman in the United Kingdom, who went from inheriting a home valued at 690,000 euros to being left with practically nothing after her little sister challenged her father’s will.
According to information published in Independentthe father, who died at the age of 85, in his last will, drawn up a few months before he died, decided to leave one of his daughters his house, located in London, while the other two would only receive about 290 euros each.
After knowing the distribution of the inheritance, the youngest daughter, not in accordance with what was established in her father’s will, went to court to challenge it considering that there were some irregularities in its preparation. Finally, the court annulled the last will and recovered a previous one in which the inheritance was distributed much more equitably.
Justice considers the last will suspicious
The conflict between the brothers began after the will was known, and the younger sister discovered that the father had changed the original will, in which everything was distributed equally, for another in which he left everything to his sister.
During the trial, the eldest daughter explained that her father had changed his will after losing trust in his brothers, since, in the old man’s opinion, the only thing they were interested in was keeping his properties. In addition, he noted that his father had complained on several occasions about his younger sister’s “bad temper” and his brother’s attitude.
Despite his arguments, for the Court the circumstances in which the last will had been made were “very suspicious”, because the man was in the hospital seriously ill when he decided to make a new document to change the distribution of the inheritance.
The issue that raised the most suspicion about the legality of the will was that it had not been signed correctly in front of the witnesses. Although they claimed that they had used the same pen as the deceased, the court saw that there were differences between the signatures and concluded that it could not be proven that everyone had signed in front of the others.
Furthermore, it also found insufficient evidence that the father actually knew and approved the contents of the document. For this reason, the judge annulled the 2021 will and declared the 2019 will valid, which established a practically equal distribution between the three brothers.
He will have to pay more than 520,000 euros for the costs of the trial
Although the ruling allowed the eldest daughter to keep part of the inheritance, after the hereditary conflict was resolved, she would have to respond along with the executor for the costs of the trial, which amounted to around 437,000 euros plus VAT, raising the total amount above 520,000 euros.
This means that, although the eldest daughter is entitled to approximately 287,500 euros according to the 2019 will, that amount would not be enough to cover the legal bill. In addition, he will have to assume his own attorneys’ fees, the amount of which has not been disclosed.
During the last hearing, the defense also requested authorization to appeal the sentence, but the judge rejected their request and ordered a first payment of about 207,000 euros plus VAT on account of costs.
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In this way, the woman who was initially going to keep practically all of her father’s fortune has ended up facing a judicial debt greater than the value of the inheritance that ultimately corresponds to her, after her sister managed to demonstrate the irregularities of the last will.