Inheritance Wars: “Lazy, Useless and Druggy” — The Daughter Her Father Deliberately Cut Out of a £1.4 Million Estate

Can you deliberately cut your adult child out of your will?

Yes.

But that is not necessarily the end of the matter.

In Howe v Howe, Roger Howe made his intentions unusually clear.

He did not want his only daughter, Jenna, to inherit his estate.

Their relationship had been deeply troubled.

He had described her in highly disparaging terms, including as “lazy”, “useless” and “druggy”.

His 2017 will left his estate instead to his mother, sister and two nephews.

When Roger died in March 2020, his estate was worth approximately:

£1.4 million.

Jenna received:

Nothing.

But in January 2025, after years of litigation, she succeeded in a claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975.

The court awarded her:

£125,000.

It is a striking modern example of the tension between two principles:

a person’s freedom to decide who inherits their property

and

the court’s statutory power to make reasonable financial provision for particular family members and dependants.

A father who plainly did not want his daughter to inherit

There was little ambiguity about Roger’s testamentary intentions.

Jenna was his only child.

Yet his will dated 4 July 2017 excluded her altogether.

Instead, his estate passed to his mother, Rosina Howe, his sister, Tina Tucker, and his nephews.

Roger had repeatedly expressed extremely negative views about his daughter.

This was therefore not a case involving an accidental omission from a will.

Nor was Jenna arguing that her father had simply forgotten about her.

She had been:

Deliberately disinherited.

That makes what happened next particularly important.

The first challenge: was the will forged?

Jenna initially took a very different route.

She challenged the validity of the will itself.

Her case included an allegation that the signature of one of the attesting witnesses had been forged.

That claim ultimately did not proceed to determination.

After evidential and representation difficulties, Jenna withdrew the probate challenge.

There was a substantial consequence.

She agreed to pay:

£42,000

towards the executors’ costs.

That might have been the end of the inheritance dispute.

It wasn’t.

A different type of claim

Jenna then brought proceedings under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975.

That distinction is fundamental.

She was no longer saying:

“My father’s will is invalid.”

She was effectively saying:

“Even if the will is valid, it fails to make reasonable financial provision for me.”

These are entirely different legal arguments.

It is possible for a will to be perfectly valid but for the court nevertheless to order financial provision from the estate under the 1975 Act.

Jenna sought approximately £450,000 for her maintenance.

The case went to trial in January 2025.

The relationship between father and daughter

The evidence painted a deeply unhappy picture.

Jenna’s case was not merely that she needed money.

She alleged that her father’s treatment of her during childhood and adolescence had contributed significantly to the difficulties she experienced later in life.

The court heard allegations of neglect and emotional cruelty.

Her case was that this treatment had contributed to serious difficulties with her health and ability to work.

That produced an unusual feature of the claim.

The father’s conduct was relevant not merely as family history.

Jenna argued there was a connection between:

• the way her father had treated her; and
• the financial and health needs for which she now sought provision from his estate.

The court regarded her health difficulties, which prevented her working, as a compelling factor in favour of some provision.

Estrangement is not necessarily fatal

This is where Howe provides an interesting comparison with Ilott v The Blue Cross.

Both involved an adult daughter.

Both daughters had been estranged from a parent.

Both parents had deliberately excluded their daughters.

And in both cases the adult child nevertheless obtained provision from the estate.

But neither case establishes a general right for an estranged adult child to inherit.

There is no such rule.

The court applies the statutory framework to the individual facts.

An estrangement may be highly relevant.

But so may:

• financial need;
• health;
• disability;
• the size of the estate;
• the competing beneficiaries;
• the deceased’s obligations and responsibilities;
• the history of the relationship;
• the parties’ conduct; and
• the reasons why the applicant is in their present circumstances.

The result is intensely fact-sensitive.

£450,000 claimed — £125,000 awarded

Jenna did not receive what she sought.

Her claim was for approximately:

£450,000.

The award was:

£125,000.

The court rejected her request for provision to purchase accommodation because her housing needs were already being met by the local authority.

Instead, the award was directed towards her actual maintenance requirements, including debts, health-related needs and future financial support.

That is an important reminder about the 1975 Act.

For an adult child, the question is not:

“What percentage of Dad’s estate do I deserve?”

Nor is it:

“What would be a fair inheritance?”

The statutory concept is reasonable financial provision for maintenance.

Those are not the same thing.

Why was the money put into trust?

The £125,000 was not simply handed to Jenna without restriction.

The award was structured through a discretionary trust.

That allowed the provision to be used to meet her needs while providing a degree of protection and financial management.

This demonstrates another important feature of Inheritance Act litigation.

The court’s powers are not necessarily confined to writing a cheque.

The form in which provision is made can matter almost as much as the amount.

The £42,000 problem

Meanwhile, the costs of Jenna’s abandoned probate challenge had created another legal battle.

The executors had a £42,000 costs order against her.

That debt was assigned to Leck Holdings Limited, which sought to enforce it.

Jenna argued that her outstanding 1975 Act claim against the estate should prevent enforcement in the meantime.

That issue itself reached the High Court in Howe v Leck Holdings Ltd [2024] EWHC 1842 (Ch).

The High Court concluded that enforcement could not proceed in the way sought while the 1975 Act claim remained unresolved because Jenna had a potential cross-demand capable of equalling or exceeding the debt.

So before the substantive inheritance claim had even been decided, the family dispute had already generated:

• a probate claim;
• a £42,000 costs liability;
• enforcement proceedings;
• an appeal to the High Court; and
• a separate Inheritance Act claim.

Litigation has momentum

This is something inheritance practitioners see repeatedly.

A dispute begins with one issue.

Then that issue generates another.

The validity of the will is challenged.

That produces a costs order.

The costs order produces enforcement proceedings.

Meanwhile another inheritance claim is issued.

Interlocutory applications follow.

Each new dispute creates its own costs and risks.

Eventually the parties are no longer simply arguing about:

“What did Dad intend?”

They are also arguing about costs, debts, procedure, enforcement and the consequences of the litigation itself.

Litigation develops momentum.

And stopping it becomes progressively harder.

As our analysis of the rise in inheritance disputes explains, the courts are seeing more of these disputes than at any point in recent decades.

“But he specifically said she should get nothing”

That is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Howe.

Roger’s intentions mattered.

Testamentary freedom matters.

But his intentions were not necessarily decisive under the 1975 Act.

The Act exists precisely because Parliament has provided circumstances in which the court can interfere with the distribution which would otherwise result from a will or intestacy.

That does not make the will invalid.

It does not mean Roger lacked capacity.

It does not mean somebody unduly influenced him.

The court can simultaneously conclude:

“This is genuinely what Roger wanted.”

and:

“The law nevertheless requires some financial provision for Jenna.”

Those propositions are not inconsistent.

A difficult question about responsibility

Howe also exposes a particularly difficult issue in family inheritance litigation.

What happens where an adult child’s present needs are said to result, at least partly, from the deceased parent’s behaviour many years earlier?

The court is not conducting a general inquiry into whether somebody was a good father.

Nor is the 1975 Act a mechanism for awarding damages for an unhappy childhood.

But the history of the relationship can be relevant to the statutory assessment.

In Howe, the evidence concerning Roger’s treatment of Jenna and the effect it had upon her was therefore significant.

That makes cases of this kind intensely personal.

Witness evidence may revisit events which occurred decades earlier.

Family members may have completely different recollections.

And the person against whom the allegations are made is dead.

The absent witness — again

That is becoming a recurring theme in Inheritance Wars.

Roger could not explain himself.

He could not respond to Jenna’s evidence about her childhood.

He could not be cross-examined.

He could not say whether his descriptions of his daughter reflected longstanding experience, anger, misunderstanding or something else.

The court had to decide the claim from the evidence which remained.

That evidential asymmetry is one reason inheritance litigation can be so unpredictable.

Could mediation have helped?

Howe is almost tailor-made for mediation analysis.

The parties faced several layers of risk.

Jenna had already experienced the consequences of pursuing an unsuccessful probate challenge.

The executors and beneficiaries had a will which expressly excluded her.

But they also faced a substantial 1975 Act claim against an estate of approximately £1.4 million.

Jenna sought around £450,000.

The court eventually awarded £125,000.

That enormous gap demonstrates the difficulty of valuing these claims.

At mediation, the question would not have been:

“Was Roger a good father?”

Nor:

“Did Jenna deserve to inherit?”

It could instead have been:

“What is a sensible financial value for the litigation risk?”

The mathematics of settlement

Suppose one side believes the claim is worth nothing.

The other believes it is worth £450,000.

Neither side has to accept the other’s analysis.

Mediation allows them to examine:

• the prospects of establishing reasonable financial provision;
• the likely range of an award;
• the claimant’s actual maintenance needs;
• the effect of estrangement;
• medical evidence;
• competing beneficiaries;
• the size and liquidity of the estate;
• existing costs liabilities;
• future legal costs;
• delay; and
• the risk of an adverse costs order.

That can turn an emotionally charged argument into a decision about risk.

Nobody has to rewrite family history

This may be the greatest advantage of mediation in cases like Howe.

Jenna did not need the beneficiaries to agree with her account of her father.

The beneficiaries did not need Jenna to accept Roger’s description of her.

A settlement could have been reached while everyone continued to disagree about the past.

That is something a trial cannot always achieve.

A judgment necessarily determines issues.

Mediation can permit the parties to say:

“We will never agree about what happened — but we can agree to stop litigating about it.”

Howe and Ilott

The comparison with Ilott deserves its own section.

In Ilott v The Blue Cross, the Supreme Court ultimately restored an award of £50,000 to an adult daughter who had been estranged from her mother for approximately 26 years.

In Howe, the court awarded £125,000 to an estranged daughter from a substantially larger estate.

Neither result creates a tariff.

There is no “estranged adult child = £X” formula.

Indeed, that is precisely the point.

Inheritance Act claims depend upon individual circumstances.

That makes decided cases useful guides.

But it also makes settlement particularly important.

The lesson from Howe v Howe

Roger Howe made his testamentary intentions clear.

His daughter was to receive nothing.

Yet the court ultimately ordered £125,000 to be provided for her.

That does not mean testamentary freedom has disappeared.

Nor does it mean an estranged adult child automatically has a successful claim.

It means that testamentary freedom operates alongside the statutory jurisdiction created by the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975.

And the result may be difficult to predict.

Jenna sought around £450,000.

She obtained £125,000.

Before that happened, there had already been a failed probate challenge, a £42,000 costs order and separate High Court litigation concerning enforcement.

The legal question was:

“What reasonable financial provision should Roger’s estate make for the daughter he deliberately excluded?”

The court ultimately answered:

£125,000.

But there is an obvious mediation question which could have been asked much earlier:

“Can we agree a figure without spending years asking courts to determine it?”

For many estates, that question is worth asking before litigation develops a life of its own.

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ProMediate Inheritance, Probate & Trusts provides specialist mediation for claims under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, adult-child inheritance claims, contested wills and wider estate disputes. Mediation can take place before proceedings or at any stage of litigation.

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This article provides general information about mediation and the reported circumstances of Howe v Howe. The substantive 2025 decision appears to be unreported and this article does not assign it a neutral citation. It does not constitute legal advice.