Feckless heirs in the spotlight

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From LinkedIn:

A great article in today’s Australian on the dangers of adult children waiting around for an ‘automatic’ inheritance given a number of recent judgements in this area.

A fundamental right here in Australia is the right of testamentary freedom – the right to leave your worldly goods to who you want when you die. However, that right is tempered by societal obligations and social norms, which means if you don’t leave proper provision for your family, they can challenge your Will to get proper provision.

This sort of challenge is known as Family Provision claim, and the law exists to stop people making capricious or mean spirited Wills that are designed to disinherit someone who should properly be provided for.

However, for too long the law has been used by people to make claims where they don’t have any real need or where the Will was not capricious or deliberately mean – and many of those claims are by adult children.

The importance of the case in this article is that Justice Pembroke is making it clear that he, at least, has had enough of those sorts of claims – and that the Will of a parent should not automatically be upended just because an adult child is not provided for.

Link to the rest at LinkedIn

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