The mistakes that could cost you your inheritance, including the one major decision about a parent’s will that experts say leads to ruinous family feuds

When Lewis Mayo threw down the gauntlet to his sister Diane Mayo Jennings over their mother’s estate, little did he know at what personal cost.

Their mother Winifred had appointed the pair as her executors in her will in 2019 and can have had little idea of the disastrous consequences that would be unleashed. Ultimately, distributing the estate, worth more than £200,000, would grind to a halt over Lewis’ insistence that he get an extra £634.77 from Diane, according to a High Court judge.

The sorry saga begins in October 2020, after the death of Mrs Mayo, with her will stating that her estate should be shared out between Lewis, Diane, and her other children, Philip, Pamela Jackson and Andrew Graham Mayo.

Lewis claimed that the car purchased by Diane and Pamela to ferry their mother to hospital appointments had been bought with a £7,000 loan from her while his sisters claimed it was a gift.

Nevertheless, Lewis and Diane, who had repaid the £7,000 to the estate, appointed solicitors to administer it. Probate, when it was issued in June 2021 had a net value of £219,898.

Their mother’s home was sold for £245,755 in June 2022 and the solicitors prepared a statement that each of the five siblings would get £51,386.

But Lewis then objected to utilities and council tax bills being reimbursed out of the estate to Diane, who, he said, had occupied their mother’s home on the understanding she would pay the bills.

According to the court’s judgment, Lewis also said that another £1,500 was due on the car bill and then he made an offer to Diana: ‘As the other beneficiaries seem prepared to carry you, I will give you a final out. You pay me the £1,000 plus one-fifth of the bills and one-fifth of the balance of the car loan and all this goes away.’

When Diane threatened to launch court proceedings to remove Lewis, he replied: ‘Personally, I can’t wait for your eloquent letters to be read out in court. Of course, with delays, strikes, etc, this will probably take place in about two years.’

With the estate paralysed, Diane, with the support of other beneficiaries, made an offer of £634.77 in November 2022 to Lewis ‘in the interests of resolving matters’.

In January 2023, Lewis said that ‘four-fifths of the car, loan balance and domestic bills be deducted from the share of the estate allocated to Diane’ and split between the other four beneficiaries.

In April that year, Diane and her siblings launched legal proceedings against Lewis. In March this year, judge Master Paul Teverson said in his judgment: ‘I do not consider that…the defendant has been acting in the interests of the beneficiaries…in my view the defendant has been influenced by his distrust and clear dislike of the first claimant and that has led to him to put obstacles in the way of the finalisation of the estate.’ 

The judge noted that the ‘impasse which has prevented the distribution of the estate’ amounted to just £634.77. He added: ‘The defendant is a person who knows exactly what he is doing.’

Lewis, the judgment noted, would be removed as lay executor and would pay £18,469 in legal costs. A hefty price for a man guaranteed only £50,000 from the estate.

Lay executors are family members or friends who are named in a will to administer the estate of the deceased person without formal legal representation, and it is a minefield which can leave them mired in disputes as bitter as the feuding Roy family in the TV drama Succession.

Just how bad this has become in Britain can best be witnessed by new statistics from the Royal Courts of Justice that show High Court actions involving lay executors are on the increase.

Between 2020 and 2023, there has been a 52 per cent surge in cases alleging breaches of fiduciary duty in relation to wills and probate, remarkably both before and after death.

The Royal Courts of Justice statistics, which were uncovered by TWM Solicitors, show that High Court actions have risen from 57 in 2020 to 87 in 2023.

This has been compounded, according to experts, by a move to an electronic system by HM Courts and Tribunals Service, staff shortages, and a lack of expertise when dealing with complex cases.

Stuart Downey, from TWM Solicitors, warns that executors can end up personally liable for any ‘actions or omissions’ and that without expertise, lay executors should seek legal advice.

This barely begins to scratch the surface of why the life of an executor has become so fraught legally, but before we examine why in detail it is best to define what the role really entails.

Dr Juliet Brook, a wills and probate expert from Reading University’s School of Law, says: ‘Why does any case come to court? It is because people are looking at the little picture rather than the big picture.

‘In Lewis Mayo, the defendant stopped looking at the big picture. If you look at the cost at the end, he kept fighting for silly, silly, things. What caused the row was the ownership of a car.

‘The judgment is very interesting because it would have been better for all concerned to settle it. The other siblings had debts they wanted to pay and wanted to move on with their lives.’

Dr Brook warns: ‘In a lot of cases, you see lay executors confusing their roles because they are often the beneficiaries. They are thinking in terms of being a spouse, partner, child, of the deceased instead of thinking, ‘I have a fiduciary duty to collect the assets in and then I need to distribute them’.

‘The problem is that the role of an executor or administrator is a fiduciary duty, so they are given a very onerous job, which means they are stepping into the shoes of the deceased.

‘But even the appointment of a solicitors’ firm by an executor is no guarantee that conflict will not commence and eventually move to the High Court with all the costs that ensue.’

This is best witnessed with the case of sisters-in-law Karen Lane and Susan Lane.

When Susan’s mother Monica Lane died in 2019, her 2013 will left the bulk of the estate to her son David Lane, who was also her business partner in an agricultural company.

But the High Court heard that ‘the relationship between David and Susan had deteriorated in the lead up to Monica’s death, and this continued after her death largely concerning the validity of the will.’

This was because ‘Susan was suspicious of how it had come about because it made David by far the principal beneficiary.’

Susan suggested ‘the will might be invalid for a number of reasons’ including Monica’s mental capacity and that David may have exerted ‘undue influence’ over their mother.

Although David and Susan were appointed the only executors by their mother, they were also named as beneficiaries along with their siblings Georgia and Daniel.

However, when David died in January 2021, his widow Karen became the personal representative of his estate and Susan became the sole executor.

What followed, according to Deputy Judge Jonathan Hilliard KC, was that ‘each of Karen and Susan cast the other as having acted improperly’. This centred on Susan’s conviction that David was not entitled to a share of the business he ran with his mother because their partnership was dissolved prior to her death and thus became an estate asset.

In January 2023, probate was granted with the estate valued at £2.5 million – with property worth £1.8 million, £450,000 cash, the business valued at £60,000 and extraneous assets making up the difference.

But by then, after mediation had failed, Karen had already launched her legal claim to have the court remove Susan as executor and confirm that David had been entitled to a share of the business.

Deputy Judge Hilliard noted that, as executor, Susan should have brought the dispute over the business to the court herself, should have responded to Karen’s claim, and failed to provide a fresh account of the estate.

He added that ‘the administration of the estate has been unsatisfactory’ and if Susan ‘remains as executrix’ she will need to ‘take a number of difficult decisions where Karen and Susan have a difficult relationship and a strong distrust of each other’.

The deputy judge concluded: ‘The beneficiaries would be better served by an independent professional administrator.’ A subsequent hearing in March laid out the full ruinous costs of this dispute.

Susan and Karen had run up total legal costs of £160,000 with the estate due to foot half the bill.

The judge ordered Susan to pay Karen £25,000 of her costs, which meant Susan would be out of pocket by £65,000, and, the court was told, it was likely the family farm would have to be sold to cover the costs. Dr Brook says: ‘It’s a more complicated administration to deal with in the first place and you have also got issues of capacity, which is another thing that tends to pervade so many of these cases.

‘This is a case where you have two executors with a difficult relationship and strong distrust of one another, so even though Susan has appointed solicitors, there is an impasse.’

Wills expert Dr Brook blames the rise in cases on the pandemic – with a surge in deaths, families often thrown together in lockdown, the switch to an electronic system and the lack of people to deal with complex cases.

Dr Simon Douglas, a barrister and academic at Jesus College, Oxford, believes that increasingly complex estates, people living longer lives, often with dementia, and blended families, help explain the increase.

He also believes that the rising value of property means that family disputes are increasingly likely to spiral out of control because the sums involved mean litigation is worth the risk.

But there is also the increasingly wide definition of the Inheritance Provision Act, which was designed to protect the interest of spouses but has now been extended to adult children.

This enables children who feel hard done by to claim that not sufficient provision has been made for them in their parents’ will.

The last word, however, should be left to High Court judge Master Julia Clark after hearing that feuding siblings had run up bills of £123,000 despite the net value of the estate being just £350,000.

She turned to the Russian writer Tolstoy for her 2021 ruling when she observed that ‘each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’.

Representatives for Diana Mayo Jennings, Lewis Mayo and Susan Lane did not respond when approached. Representatives for Karen Lane said she would not be commenting.