Being left out of a parent’s Will is a shock, and it is often why people turn to us after a bereavement. The law allows adult children in England and Wales to make an Inheritance Act Claim against a parent’s estate. What it does not do is hand out a share of the estate simply because someone feels they have been treated unfairly.
We explain what the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 (the Act) actually offers, and what the courts have actually awarded.
Who can claim under the Inheritance Act?
The Act only allows certain people to claim financial support from the estate of someone who has died:
- the existing spouse or civil partner of the deceased;
- a former spouse or civil partner;
- a partner who had been cohabiting with the deceased for at least two years before they died;
- a natural or adopted child of the deceased;
- anyone treated as a child of the family (including stepchildren);
- anyone who was financially supported by the deceased when they died.
Most enquiries about inheritance claims come from ‘natural or adopted children’ of the deceased.
Claims by adult children
Inheritance Act claims by adult children remain one of the most difficult areas of contentious probate.
Broadly speaking, the Act allows an adult child to make a claim where their reasonable financial needs have not been met. There is no restriction on eligibility for any child: whatever their age, whatever their income, and however long ago they last spoke to their parent – it makes no difference under the Act. Their claim can arise either because they were not adequately provided for in the Will, or because the deceased did not leave a Will at all so they did not receive sufficient financial support under the Rules of Intestacy.
So eligibility to claim is the easy part. Winning the claim is not.
The court will assess two issues:
- Did the Will fail to make reasonable financial provision for the claiming party?
- If so, what provision is required for that child’s maintenance, based on their needs and the circumstances of the estate?
The crucial word here is ‘maintenance’. For every claimant except a surviving spouse or civil partner, the Act is not interested in what a fair share would be. It is asking what is needed in order to live. That is a far narrower question, and it is where most adult child claims fail.
Looking at real cases and what they show us
Ilott v The Blue Cross (2017)
This is a leading case where the Supreme Court considered a claim by an adult daughter who had been estranged from her mother for over twenty-five years. The estate was worth around £486,000, and the claimant lived modestly and relied on state benefits for her maintenance. The Will left the estate to animal charities and excluded the claimant entirely.
The District Judge awarded the daughter £50,000. The Court of Appeal thought that sum was too low and raised it to £143,000 plus a further £20,000 she could draw on in instalments, so that it would not affect her state benefits. The Supreme Court then overturned the Court of Appeal’s decision and restored the original £50,000, a little over 10% of the estate.
The daughter’s real need was recognised. However, her mother’s testamentary freedom carried substantial weight, and the award stayed at maintenance level.
Nahajec v Fowle (2017)
Nahajec v Fowle was a County Court decision concerning a claim against an estate of around £265,000 which was left entirely to the deceased’s friend.
The estrangement occurred when the father left his family and daughter when the daughter was a child. She kept trying to reconcile the relationship, but he rebuffed her at every attempt, including putting the phone down when she rang to tell him that her mother had died. She was 31, on a zero-hours contract, £6,600 in debt (much of it payday loans), and working unpaid hours at a veterinary surgery to qualify as a veterinary nurse.
She asked for a payment of £59,000 out of her father’s estate, and the beneficiary argued that £6,600 was the most she would need as it was the value of her debts. The judge said the first was too high and the second too low, and awarded her £30,000, or 11.3% of the estate.
What influenced the outcome: the estrangement was not her fault and she had genuinely tried to repair her relationship with her father. Added to this, her ambition for a professional qualification was real rather than fanciful, so the cost of getting there counted as maintenance.
Miles v Shearer (2021)
In the case of Miles v Shearer, two adult daughters made a claim against their father’s £2.2 million estate. Their claims were dismissed outright.
In 2008 he had given them £177,000 and £185,000, told them it was their legacy, and said in writing that from then on they were on their own. He never wavered, declining to help either through their divorces.
That consistency was fatal, for a reason that catches people out. The Act asks what obligations the deceased had immediately before death, not at any point in the past. Twenty years of school fees and deposits create nothing that survives a clear statement that the money has stopped. Whatever he once owed was, as the court put it, defunct.
Neither daughter could show a maintenance need she could not meet. One earned £57,000 at Sotheby’s. The other was supported by her mother. One had a severely autistic child, and that did not help her claim either: grandchildren cannot claim, and a dependant’s disability counts only through its effect on the claimant’s own earnings and outgoings.
McDaniel v Talbot (2026)
This was the most recent case, and the most instructive.
The father ended contact when his daughter was eight months old and went on to build up his fortune. His 2014 Will left everything to his wife and expressly excluded his daughter because he had not seen her in twenty years. Then, in 2019, he contacted her himself. What followed was a real father-daughter relationship, and he died suddenly in 2022 without ever revisiting the Will.
She was not destitute, and this matters. She ran her own business; between her earnings, her husband’s and their benefits the household had £57,495.96 a year income against outgoings of £56,678.96. Her two sons, 22 and 16, both have severe disabilities and live with her full time. The judge called her a “necessitous claimant”, just able to make ends meet, with no cushion at all.
The award was £123,418.47, or 8.2% of the £1,574,579.67 estate. The figure was built from the bottom up out of what the claimant needed to live on. She had asked for enough to buy a house; the judge refused, because her housing costs were already covered, if only just, and the remedy is maintenance rather than improvement.
Two things are worth noting:
First, the award was not just a cheque: £20,263.47 was to clear her debts and £103,155 was placed in a discretionary trust she can draw on, structured so it would not disqualify her from means-tested benefits. How an award is distributed matters as much as its size.
Second, why she won. Being his child was not enough, and nor was being needy. What tipped it was her caring, for her sons, for her father, and for his mother. The judge would not point to a moral obligation as such, but held that those qualities gave the situation a moral dimension. That was the special circumstance; the Act does not provide a reward for good behaviour.
The reality check
These cases demonstrate that the Court is highly unlikely to award an economic windfall to an adult child. Claimants must show real financial need, and any award is restricted to maintenance, whatever the size of the estate. In McDaniel v Talbot, an estate of over £1.5 million produced an award of 8.2%: enough to clear the claimant’s debts and give her a modest annual buffer, and no more. That figure reflects the gap in her budget, not the size of the estate.
It is important not to read the percentages awarded as a guide. Where the judges mentioned a proportion at all, they worked the award out from the claimant’s living costs and noticed the percentage afterwards. The judge in McDaniel v Talbot expressly said that she had not set out to achieve any particular fraction.
Nor is estrangement fatal. Every one of the four cases above involved an estranged adult child, and three of them succeeded in their claim. The Court will not sit and apportion blame for a broken relationship. What matters is why it happened, and what the relationship actually was by the time of death.
What the Court will not do is override testamentary freedom beyond what maintenance strictly requires. Meaning these cases remain difficult to win.
The importance of paperwork
The most practical lesson in these judgments is about evidence, and it works both ways.
In McDaniel v Talbot the claimant submitted a revenue bar chart that was given no weight because the underlying data was never produced, and her updated outgoings were rejected because she did not exhibit bank statements. The widow’s claimed increase in outgoings was rejected for exactly the same reason. Where figures were accepted, it was because payslips, a P60 and bank statements sat behind them.
Credibility works the same way. In Miles v Shearer the daughters ran an extensive attack on their stepmother’s character, and the judge found their evidence was coloured by a sense of entitlement, preferring Pamela Shearer’s account where it mattered. In McDaniel v Talbot it was the other way round: the widow argued that the relationship had been a friendship rather than a father-daughter one. The judge rejected that, and found her evidence had been affected by a desire to minimise the relationship in order to undermine the claim.
These claims are decided on documents. Bank statements, accounts, benefit letters, medical records, correspondence. Start gathering yours before you start your claim.
Time limits
Remember, time is of the essence in these claims. If you are considering bringing an Inheritance Act claim, there are strict time limits. You usually only have six months from the date the Grant of Probate is issued to formally make a claim to the Court.
Missing this deadline makes it incredibly difficult to bring a claim, so seeking legal advice as soon as possible is critical.
If you are on the other side
Executors and beneficiaries who are facing a claim also have decisions to make, usually under pressure and often while grieving their loss. Knowing when a claim is weak enough to resist or strong enough to settle is as much a part of this work as bringing one. Cunningtons acts for both sides.
Talk to Cunningtons
We have considerable experience in advising families on inheritance and estate matters, and our civil litigation team is available to clients through all of our branches.
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