Permission to Bring Financial Provision Claim Out of Time Refused

A claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 for reasonable financial provision from a deceased person's estate must be brought within six months of the grant of probate or letters of administration being issued, unless the courts give permission to bring a claim after that time. Recently, the High Court refused a man permission to bring a claim nearly four a half years late for financial provision from the estate of his mother's ex-boyfriend.

The man, a personal trainer and reality TV star, was born in 1989. His mother had been in a relationship with a property developer from around 1995 to 2004, and they had lived a very affluent lifestyle. The man claimed that the property developer had treated him as a child of the family and had given him emotional, educational and financial support during his childhood and into early adulthood. However, he had not had any contact with the property developer or received any financial support from him since 2012. A will the property developer had made in 2015 made no provision for him.

The property developer died in 2019, leaving an estate valued at £38.5 million. In October 2024, the man brought a claim seeking financial provision from the estate. As probate had been granted in November 2019, the claim was brought nearly four and a half years after the expiry of the time limit contained in Section 4 of the Act. He therefore sought the Court's permission to make the application.

Refusing permission, the Court found that his claim had no real prospect of success. The property developer had made it clear in an email to the man's mother in 2012 that he was no longer going to provide financial assistance to him, and there was no real prospect of him establishing that the property developer had owed him any obligations or responsibilities at the time of his death. Even if it could be established that the property developer had represented to him that he would one day inherit the property business, the most that could be said was that he had therefore chosen to study property and construction at university rather than another subject. There was no evidence that he had acted to his detriment by doing so.

The Court concluded that the man's financial needs should be assessed by reference to the standard of living he enjoyed from his own resources and earnings, rather than a standard of living commensurate with his upbringing. He had been nearly 30 when the property developer died. Since 2012 he had lived a separate life based on his own earnings, and the high standard of living he had enjoyed as a result of the property developer's support had ceased. He had known from 2012 or 2013 that no provision would be made for him.