In the recent 1975 Act case Howe v Howe, an estranged adult child claimant was awarded £125,000 from her late father’s £1.4m estate, despite being deliberately excluded from his will and being described by him as “lazy” and “druggy.” Her father Roger Howe, a pirate radio engineer, had fallen to his death from a window in 2020 and left his entire estate to his mother, sister and two nephews.

During the trial, claimant Jenna Howe alleged that the reason she required financial provision was directly related to her father’s neglect of her during her adolescence, which is when she started taking drugs. Counsel for the claimant referred repeatedly to the deceased’s conduct, emphasising the impact it had upon the claimant as she grew up.

The decision

The claimant had previously issued, and then discontinued, a probate claim on the grounds that one of the attesting witness' signature had been forged. This resulted in her having to pay the executors’ costs in the sum of £42,000. The claimant was also convicted of harassment against one of the executors of her father’s estate. However, the judge found these conduct issues to be minor factors when deciding her award. The claimant’s health issues, causing her to be unable to work, persuaded the judge in this case that she had met the threshold for requiring financial provision for her maintenance to be met from the estate.

The judge made an award of £125,000 from an estate worth approximately £1.4m, departing from the terms of the deceased’s will and expressed testamentary wishes. Perhaps most controversially, the award included provision for the claimant’s breast implants and to cover some of her personal debts, including part of the costs order made in the probate claim she had unsuccessfully pursued.

For the majority of trust and estates litigators, this will undoubtedly be considered a very generous (and unusual) award in the case of an estranged adult claimant – one has to question whether the decision to make provision for costs in the probate claim is the correct one, particularly given the conduct issues in that claim. Without sight of the judgment, we can only hope that this was an attempt to achieve justice in ensuring that the estate would recover the costs order made against an otherwise impecunious litigant.