To mark the 50th anniversary of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 (‘the Inheritance Act’) receiving Royal Assent on 12 November 2025 Hayley’s specialist Consultancy Team are releasing an ‘Inside the Inheritance Act’ series to provide clients with a deeper dive into how the Inheritance Act works; one article per week in the series, in the build up to the anniversary.
In this final chapter of the series, the team will be diving into the history of the Inheritance Act and its earlier iterations as well as discussing the extent to which the Act remains relevant today after 50 years of implementation.
What is the Inheritance Act?
The Inheritance Act is a law which provides a mechanism for certain categories of individuals to seek (increased) reasonable financial provision from the estate of a deceased person where their Will or the intestacy rules have failed to provide that provision for them upon their death.
The categories of applicants who can make a claim are:
- Spouses / Civil Partners
- Former Spouses / Civil Partners
- Cohabiting Partners
- Children
- Children of the Family
- Financial Dependants
What is the history of the Inheritance Act?
Although receiving Royal Assent on 12 November 1975, the Inheritance Act was not the first iteration of the law governing provision to be made for classes of applicants who had received insufficient provision from their loved one’s estate.
The first major statute governing this area of law was the Inheritance (Family Provision) Act 1938 which allowed the Court to override a testator’s Will to provide for certain family members. It introduced the concept of reasonable financial provision but only for two classes of applicant – spouses and children. The Act was introduced in response to cases of extreme disinheritance where dependants were left destitute.
This was followed by the Family Provision Act 1966 which expanded the categories of eligible applicants to include former spouses and dependants. It refined the Court’s discretion and clarified procedural aspects of the law in this area. This Act was part of a broader movement in the 1960s towards more equitable family provision.
Whilst not a direct predecessor to the 1975 Inheritance Act, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 influenced the 1975 Act by establishing principles for financial relief on divorce which were later mirrored in inheritance claims. The 1975 Act itself explicitly references this legislation when considering what a surviving spouse might have received upon a divorce rather than upon their spouse’s death.
The Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 then consolidated and replaced the 1938 and 1966 Acts. It broadened the scope of eligible applicants to include cohabiting couples and civil partners (via later amendments). It introduced more nuanced judicial discretion and allowed claims against an estate whether the deceased died with a Will or died intestate.
Since the 1975 Act, the most recent significant update to the legislation came via the Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Act 2014 which:
- enabled applicants to make a claim prior to a Grant of Representation issuing to the estate (previously it had only been possible to do so afterwards);
- expanded the definition of a ‘child of the family’ to children treated as part of a family unit (whether or not within a marriage/civil partnership) and included single parent family units and grandchildren as potentially eligible applicants so long as the deceased ‘stood in the role of a parent’ to the them;
- amended the definition of a financial dependant to take out the balance sheet exercise weighing up whether the deceased or the applicant contributed more and instead introduced a ‘substantial contribution’ test;
- removed the requirement to have issued the claim within 6 months of the Grant of Representation in order to seek to call back into the estate the deceased’s severed share of jointly owned assets under section 9, allowing such claims to now be included within out of time applications seeking permission to bring the claim under section 4;
- clarified the requirement for the court to consider the hypothetical divorce cross check when assessing claims for spousal applicants.
The 1975 Inheritance Act is therefore better viewed as an Act which is a part of a continuum of reform in this area of the law, reflecting changing social norms amongst families, dependancy and fairness in succession law. The latest version of the Act reflects a more inclusive and flexible approach to family provision claims, especially for non-traditional family structures and dependants.
Is the Inheritance Act still as relevant today as it was in 1975?
In practice it is the experience of our specialist team that the Inheritance Act is more relevant and necessary today than it has ever been. The changing nature of family dynamics including increased cohabitation vs marriage, various forms of flexible blended families and in times of financial difficulty which the country has found itself in for many years now the law simply isn’t keeping pace with the varying ways in which individuals are financially dependant upon friends and family such that significant injustices arise upon death which the law simply cannot address without the Inheritance Act.
In recent years, the Act has come in for criticism with some commentators suggesting most applicants are unmeritorious ‘chancers’ who are interfering with testamentary freedom. Hayley’s consultancy team firmly disagree with that analysis. The Act puts in place sufficient checks and balances through the eligibility criteria, section 3 factors and level of discretion afforded to the Court to ensure that only those who have genuine claims will succeed in obtaining an award. Contrast that with the increased extent to which we are seeing abuse of the elderly in our practice at their most vulnerable in their latter years – an issue which has only increased in volume since the covid pandemic – where often homemade Wills are executed by testators who either barely know what they are being asked to sign or are readily pressured into doing so by overbearing relatives who think they know what is best for them or, most concerningly, actively manipulate them towards benefitting their own ends. Once again, the Inheritance Act is often the last beacon of opportunity for the deceased’s loved ones to seek to rectify that injustice for them, particularly when you factor in the excessive costs, risks and legal burden which applies in seeking to instead pursue a challenge to a Will in the alternative.
In a climate where access to justice for such claimants has been more and more curtailed in recent years as a result of the removal of legal aid provision and the Jackson reforms overly burdening claimants in such claims (for whom little consideration was made at the time, when the context in which the reforms were focused was for personal injury claimants) this 50-year old Act (with roots back to the pre-Second World War era) remains a last bastion of access to justice for these often most necessitous of claimant.
As such, we in Hayley’s Consultancy Team take this opportunity to celebrate the anniversary of the Inheritance Act in this series and will continue to fully support and advocate for its continued application for claimants up and down the country. Indeed we put our money where our mouth is where this is concerned on a daily basis by sharing in the risk and bearing the financial burden of pursing these claims for our clients, through no win no fee funding, which is offered less and less by other firms who are otherwise risk averse or fail to see the worthiness of our client’s claims under the Act.
We hope you have enjoyed this Inside the Inheritance Act series and will return with our next series very soon.
SBMB – Specialist Inheritance Act Consultancy Firm
If you feel you have not received adequate provision from the estate of a loved one (either in a Will or via the rules of intestacy), please contact us for a free initial consultation to discuss your options for bringing a claim and how we can help, including any funding arrangements that we may be able to offer (such as no win no fee).
Read more in the series: ‘Inside the Inheritance Act’.
For more from Hayley’s specialist Consultancy Team: ACTAPS Consultancy Firm.
Call us on 0333 888 0554 or email us at [email protected] today for a free no obligation initial assessment.
