Some parents ‘not shy’ about their favourite child when it comes to making their wills

• Published date: 20 January 2024
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

Those observations from experienced lawyers have been borne out in several cases before the High Court, including one last August where a woman got orders with a view to possibly challenging her father’s will. It left some €3 million of his €3.5 million estate, including the family farm, to her brother, who owns a business, and about €500,000 to her

In another case last November, the Supreme Court finally halted a woman’s unsuccessful seven-year legal battle with two older siblings over her allegedly not getting a full quarter share of their father’s estate, valued at about €308,000, after he died intestate 36 years ago.

While it was agreed, the woman claimed, within the family that their father would have wished for her brother, who had been running the farm for some years, to get it, she was assured she would have full access to the family home but had felt increasingly unwelcome there in later years. The siblings denied her claims.

In a different case, a man who believes he was born in a mother and baby home was awarded €225,000 against the estate of his estranged birth mother who had not included him, her only child, in her will after Ms Justice Siobhán Stack declared, under section 117 of the Succession Act, his mother failed to provide for him.

Section 117 provides that a child, including an adult, can seek a court declaration stating that a deceased parent failed in their “moral duty” to make proper provision for them in accordance with their means. If a court agrees, it can order such provision out of the estate at a level it considers to be just.

In 2017, the Law Reform Commission recommended the removal of the words...