The Supreme Court decision in Ilott represents a qualified victory for testamentary freedom, as Greg Williams explains
- Who can apply for reasonable financial provision from a deceased’s estate?
- An award for financial provision shall always be determined to an objective standard.
- An award is at the expense of those whom the testator intended to benefit.
In a claim against an estate, what constitutes reasonable financial provision? It is one which the courts have spent some years trying to answer. The recent, authoritative, decision of the Supreme Court in Ilott v The Blue Cross and others [2017] UKSC 17 assists us. In short, the answer is that an award for financial provision shall always be determined to an objective standard. The statutory criteria must be applied. Unfortunately, as Lady Hale pointed out in this case, the law gives no guidance as to the weight of the criteria to be considered in a specific scenario, such as in the case of an adult child. The result of the current law is that a court’s decision invariably involves a value judgment. There may be a range
