Inheritance Wars: When a Family Dispute Continues Beyond Death

Ofori-Kuma v Fordjor & Ors [2026] EWHC 2327 (Fam)

Few family disputes can be more painful than an argument about what should happen to the body of someone who has just died.

In Ofori-Kuma v Fordjor & Ors [2026] EWHC 2327 (Fam), the High Court was required to decide a deeply personal dispute between members of the same family over whether the late Margaret Ofori-Kuma should be buried or cremated.

The judgment, handed down on 9 September 2026, is a striking example of how bereavement can bring longstanding family tensions to the surface — and how quickly a disagreement which might once have been capable of resolution within the family can become High Court litigation.

A family divided after a sudden death

Margaret died unexpectedly on 9 June 2026, aged 60.

She left three adult daughters. Following her death, a dispute developed between her daughters on one side and her mother and sister on the other.

Her daughters maintained that Margaret had told them that she wished to be cremated. Her 90-year-old mother maintained that Margaret had privately and unequivocally told her that she did not wish to be cremated.

There was therefore a painful conflict of evidence about the wishes of someone who was no longer there to resolve it.

The dispute also had an important cultural dimension. Margaret’s mother and sister relied upon the family’s Ghanaian heritage and evidence concerning the customary practices of the Akyem/Akim Abuakwa maternal royal lineage. It was said that cremation was regarded within that tradition as a grave taboo.

Margaret’s daughters, however, gave evidence of conversations in which their mother had expressed a desire to be cremated and to remain close to her children rather than being buried and, in her words as recalled by them, “left behind”.

The court was consequently dealing with much more than a technical question of probate law. It was being asked to determine competing accounts of a mother’s wishes against a background of grief, cultural and religious considerations, and existing tensions within an extended family.

An attempt to resolve matters within the family

Importantly, the family had tried to discuss the issue before it reached its final court hearing.

A meeting involving some 20 members of the extended maternal and paternal families took place on 10 July 2026. Its purpose was to resolve the funeral arrangements.

The High Court ultimately accepted the daughters’ evidence that the meeting had concluded with an agreement that Margaret’s wish to be cremated should be respected.

Unfortunately, that did not bring the dispute to an end.

Proceedings followed. An interim injunction prevented funeral arrangements from proceeding and, three months after Margaret’s death, the High Court was required to determine who should have responsibility for her body and funeral.

Simplified visual explainer

Three months from bereavement to the High Court

1. 1

   9 June 2026 — Margaret dies unexpectedly, aged 60

2. 2

   A dispute develops between her three daughters and her mother and sister

3. 3

   10 July 2026 — some 20 members of the extended family meet to resolve the funeral arrangements

4. 4

   Proceedings are issued; an interim injunction prevents funeral arrangements proceeding

5. 5

   9 September 2026 — the High Court determines who has responsibility for the body and funeral

What did the High Court decide?

Mr Justice MacDonald dismissed the applications brought by Margaret’s mother and sister.

Under the Administration of Estates Act 1925 and the Non-Contentious Probate Rules 1987, Margaret’s children had priority in relation to the administration of her estate.

The court considered whether there were “special circumstances” justifying departing from that normal priority. It concluded that there were not.

The judge accepted the daughters’ evidence concerning their mother’s wishes and was not persuaded that the evidence concerning customary practice should override Margaret’s own wishes.

A limited grant was therefore made to Margaret’s three daughters so that they could obtain their mother’s body and arrange her funeral and cremation. The court also restrained other family members from interfering with those arrangements.

The applicants were ordered to pay the respondents’ costs.

The human cost of litigation after a death

Perhaps the most important part of the judgment is not the technical probate law at all.

At the beginning of his judgment, Mr Justice MacDonald referred to previous judicial warnings about disputes over the burial or cremation of loved ones. He observed:

“It is plain to this court that the arc of grief that follows the loss of a loved one has been deepened and extended in this case by the dispute that has followed Margaret’s passing.”

That is a powerful observation.

Margaret died on 9 June. By September, her mother, sister and three daughters were appearing in the High Court against one another.

The court was required to examine private conversations, family relationships, allegations of past behaviour, cultural traditions and events following previous family deaths.

Whatever the legal outcome, litigation of that kind inevitably risks leaving scars which remain long after the proceedings themselves have finished.

Could mediation have helped?

It is impossible to know whether mediation would have resolved this particular dispute.

Some disputes ultimately require a court to make a decision, particularly where urgent funeral arrangements are concerned and the parties hold fundamentally incompatible views.

But the case demonstrates why early, properly conducted mediation can be particularly valuable in inheritance, probate and post-death family disputes.

Mediation does not require either side to abandon sincerely held cultural, religious or personal beliefs. Instead, it provides a confidential environment in which those beliefs can be explained and understood.

In a case such as this, an independent mediator can help family members separate several questions which can otherwise become entangled:

• What did the deceased actually want?
• What does the law provide?
• What cultural or religious considerations are important to different family members?
• Is there any practical arrangement which can accommodate those competing concerns?
• Most importantly, what will the family relationship look like after the dispute is over?

A judge can ultimately decide who has the legal right to make funeral arrangements.

A judge cannot necessarily repair the relationships damaged on the journey to that decision.

Mediation must also be genuinely independent

The judgment contains another point of relevance to mediation.

An organisation called Another Ear CIC had become involved in assisting members of the family. Its precise status was unclear to the court. The judge expressly made no findings about the organisation, but raised concerns about whether correspondence appeared to hold it out as providing legal representation and directed that a copy of the judgment be sent to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

That should not be confused with a criticism of mediation itself.

Rather, it illustrates the importance in highly sensitive disputes of understanding precisely who is acting, in what capacity, and with what professional status.

A mediator’s role is fundamentally different from that of a solicitor or advocate. An independent mediator does not represent one branch of a family against another. The mediator facilitates negotiations between all participants and remains neutral as to the outcome.

That distinction becomes particularly important when emotions are high.

A lesson for families

There is also a practical lesson from this deeply sad case.

People often make wills to determine what should happen to their property but give much less thought to recording their wishes about their funeral, burial or cremation.

Margaret’s death was unexpected. Her family was consequently left trying to reconstruct her wishes from conversations remembered after her death.

Clear communication and a written record of important wishes cannot guarantee that disagreements will never arise. But they can considerably reduce the scope for uncertainty at precisely the time when a family is least equipped emotionally to deal with it.

Our guide to avoiding an inheritance dispute before it begins considers what families can record in advance.

Resolving inheritance disputes before they become inheritance wars

The final words of the judgment are telling.

Having decided the legal dispute, the court expressed the hope that the maternal and paternal sides of Margaret’s family could now come together to celebrate and commemorate the life of a much-loved mother, daughter and sister.

That is ultimately what disputes following a death should be about: finding a way forward which allows people to grieve rather than creating another source of grief.

At ProMediate, we provide independent mediation for inheritance, probate, wills and trust disputes. Where disagreements arise within a family following a death, early mediation can provide a private and structured opportunity to address them before positions become entrenched and relationships are damaged beyond repair.

Inheritance disputes involve law and money, but very often they are really about families. Mediation provides an opportunity to address both.

Facing an inheritance or probate dispute?

Family disputes following a death can become entrenched very quickly. ProMediate provides independent mediation for disputes concerning wills, probate, trusts and inheritance, offering families a confidential opportunity to explore resolution without immediately resorting to further litigation.

Enquire About Mediation · Our Inheritance Mediators