Mediation is well suited to inheritance act and contentious probate claims. Costs can be high in these sorts of cases.
Another claim regarding an estate has resulted in what have been described as “ruinous” legal costs. We always recommend mediation in such cases, even if they reach the Court of Appeal, as this case did.
Morton & Anor v Morton [2023] EWCA Civ 700 (20 June 2023)
The claim went to Court in Manchester in 2021, and involved a brother and sister at war over an inheritance.
The judge said tension had developed between mother and son in her final years due to her concerns about his handling of the business, and the purchase of a £1.9million farm with family money which his sister was only told about afterwards.
The mother’s will of May 2016 ‘gave the whole of her estate to the sister although provided the Claimant with a six-month time-limited option to buy out her share in the farm partnership.
The court heard that the Claimant had worked alongside his parents, helping them expand their 400-acre holding and introducing new innovations and farming techniques to maximise its profits from the time he left agricultural college aged 21.
The judge said the mother had probably changed her will after her daughter ‘undermined her confidence’ in her son whom the daughter distrusted over his handling of the farm partnership and the purchase of the £1.9million farm in 2012.
However, there was ‘no substantial evidence that the sister had acted with coercion or misrepresentation,’ .
During the first hearing in Manchester, he explained that he gave everything to the business after his father repeatedly assured him that one day the farm would be his.
The Claimant won his case and his sister was ordered to pay him about £1million – half her inheritance.
In a judgment handed down in January 2022, the judge found for the Claimant, adding £956,850 to his share of the partnership on the basis that he had worked to his detriment on the farm due to his father’s promises that it would be his. He also gave him an option tobuy his sister out.
In another court hearing in September 2022 the same judge found that the sister was entitled to more than £700,000, representing annual interest on her share of the farm since 2016 when she inherited her mother’s portion. The Claimant was ordered to give around £700,000 to his sister, representing seven years’ worth of annual interest on her £2million stake in the farming partnership.
The siblings went to Court again with the Claimant challenging the £700,000 payment to his sister at the Court of Appeal.
The Claimant then succeeded in having the £700,000 payment overturned and leaving his sister facing potentially ‘ruinous’ legal costs.
Is it any wonder that the judge in the recent case of >> Ramji v Harvey & Ors [2023] EWHC 1664 (Ch) (06 July 2023)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2023/1664.html
concluded that “It is very much to be hoped that the parties can settle the remaining aspects of this claim if they can. I encourage them to take advantage of everything that alternative dispute resolution has to offer, and particularly to give serious consideration to mediation.