General Chat

Was this will done by a solicitor? If so, another solicitor should be able to sort it.

However, when I read it, I can only see that person b's living child will inherit person b's share. If the child is under 21 it will be held in trust until they come to that age.
No child to inherit if the person (a,b,c,d or e) is still alive is pretty clear.

Again thanks everyone for replying I am seeing a solicitor next week, it's a large amount of money involved my cousin told me yesterday that my share or what would have been my mothers share is about £60000, think I've put the right amount of zeros it's sixty thousand pounds so it would be quite life changing , also my aunt told me both her and my cousin are taking out insurance against being sued , I feel so confused by the whole affair and also upset that it's happening, I will let you know what the solicitor says, again thanks everyone <3

Good luck, Pam.

If your sister was dead when the testator died, it looks as though her children are not in line for an inheritance.

Being optimistic, perhaps your aunt and cousin are feeling sorry for your sister's children and they find the will a tad unfair. If this is the case they may be trying to ensure that the children receive their mother's share (half of that £60,000) if she had been alive when the testator died? (A variation could be what they are after in order to include the children.)

Have you asked them?

The will seems pretty clear to me though perhaps your aunt and cousin, as executors, feel obliged to include your sister's children to avoid any ill-feeling. I would probably feel the same but I believe you would all have to agree on a Deed of Variation.

I think you have done the right thing in seeking a solicitor's advice.

i look forward to hearing the outcome.

I thought I'd clarify what I know about a Deed of Variation. It also shows how important it is to use percentages in wills, rather than specific amounts.

In my working life, I came across the situation below.

Many years ago, when an elderly person died it was discovered that the will had been made umpteen years before the person's death - and the will was not written in percentages but in figures, leaving, say, £50,000 each to two charities but the bulk of the estate to the deceased person's children. The bulk of the estate was, at the time of drawing up the will, substantially more than the amount left to the charities.

By the time of the person's death there was nothing (or very little) for the children to inherit as the person had used up almost all of the savings.

The solicitor approached the charities, explaining the situation. It was clearly unfair to the children who had been the major beneficiaries at the time the will was signed. One charity (the smaller one) agreed immediately. The other (a large, well-known one) was disinclined to agree, even after a considerable time. That charity was eventually persuaded to 'do the right thing' in accordance with the original intent of the will.

A Deed of Variation was signed eventually.


I've written on this before in some other thread, so apologies for any repetition.

Another variation of how to leave money is by dividing the estate into "parts" ................

eg, 10 parts, of which 4 will be left to a, 3 to b, etc etc


We were involved in a will like this about 30 years ago when an elderly cousin of OH's father died. A single woman in her 70s, her will specified the number of parts that were to go to each of her cousins, and then to their offspring. OH's father was dead, we had to supply his sister's address to the solicitor. Most of the other cousins were also dead so their offspring had to be traced. Eventually after about 2 years, OH and sis-i-l got their inheritance, and then more money arrived about 3 years later after further settlement of the will.


We rewrote our will last year, and it is divided into percentages ......... we have no idea how much will be in the estate when we die. It depends on how long we live, how much money we have to spend to get good health care (expensive to very expensive over here), whether we still own a house and how much that will sell for, etc etc etc.

Taking every possible precaution because the estate could be much larger or very much smaller, so percentages were very obviously the best option.

We decided that we wanted to leave something to nieces and nephews and to charities we support, as well as to our daughter and grandson ......... the lawyer was very careful to ensure that we had thought about whether our daughter might go to court to claim more of the estate. We hope not!!

But it is also very carefully spelled out as to what is to happen if one of the beneficiaries has died, and how that percentage is to be divided in the event of living offspring or not ............. in fact one niece is already deceased leaving 1 child so that child is named.

It is particularly carefully spelled out in our daughter's case ............ if she is dead, her percentage is added to the percentage being put into a trust fund for her son. He will not get access to that money until he is 30. If he is also dead and there are no other offspring, all the money returns to the estate. That may sound harsh for daughter's husband, but we have our problems with him, and it was acceptable to the lawyer.

It seemed to me that a lot of what we did, followed a standard procedure (over here).

We also included in the will that nieces and nephews should be allowed the option of choosing anything that we owned that our daughter did not want, especially things that we had inherited from "their" side of the family.

Also specified is that if any part of the estate is sold (house, art work, books, etc etc), the proceeds go back into the estate for disbursement.

Spoke to a solicitor yesterday and was told that the wording of the will is ambiguous but it does appear that I would inherit my mothers full share but because of the ambiguity then it could go to both costly and lengthy legal battle, so I have said that to avoid this I will accept a 2/3 share with the remaining 1/3 going to my sisters children, and I have said I will sign a deed of variation to this effect, we now have to see if this is acceptable to all parties so it's watch this space.
Many thanks to all of you who have taken the time to give me your words of support and words of wisdom on this. Pam

Hope it works Pam, probably a good decision to save it dragging on and giving a lion's share to solicitors.

Yes, glad to see there is a solution but just out of interest, which wording does your solicitor consider ambiguous?

The wording you described originally seemed unambiguous, or is there something else we are missing?

Sorry not got back to reply but had one of the dreaded menieres attacks so it's been lying down trying to stop the world spinnng around. Thanks for your replies it's now just wait to see if the offer is accepted or not , Inspector, the ambiguity is in the wording of "living at my death" it shouldn't have that wording and it not having the added wording after in equal shares per stirpes something about it going down to a further generation, but the other way of looking at it is that it didn't have it because that's what he wanted.!!!!!!
Pam??