Paul Jenkins has always been told the £4.5million his father amassed as a self-made mogul would eventually be split between him and his sister Susan. Paul’s father Henry was proud to have built his fortune from scratch through astute property purchases and successful business ventures – and always wanted his children to live comfortably on the fruits of his labour.
The family fortune would first go to the siblings’ mother Diane, but anything left when she died would go to the children.
So when Henry died in 2024 and the money went to Diane, everything seemed to be going ahead as planned.
But in the two years since, Paul has been devastated to learn he is being cut out of the inheritance.
Paul, who is in his 50s, has discovered his mother and sister have rewritten Diane’s will, leaving him with none of the wealth he was promised by his father. Paul, who works as a civil servant, suspects his sister has crafted lies to turn his mother, who is in her late 70s, against him and keep the inheritance for herself.
Susan, he suspects, has gone so far as to write a fake report in Paul’s name that claims his mother is ‘nutty’ and launching an attempt to take control of the money. He believes Susan presented this to Diane in a devious ploy to manipulate her.
Paul is now in a desperate race against time to win over his elderly mother or find official recourse and secure his inheritance before it’s too late. Family rows over inheritance become far more complicated – and expensive – to fight after death.
He says: ‘I feel sick and betrayed. I have done nothing wrong – I’ve only ever helped and looked after my little sister, my mother and my father.’
Paul, who works as a civil servant, suspects his sister has crafted lies to turn his mother against him and keep the inheritance for herself
Despite repeatedly trying to contact his mother and sister, he says he has been unable to get any answers. So is there anything Paul can do to stop his sister from taking the inheritance for herself?
The Jenkins family – we have changed their name for legal reasons – are just one in a growing number of families in Britain caught up in bitter disputes about inheritances. More than 11,500 people filed applications to halt the administration of an estate between January and July last year, official Ministry of Justice figures show.
The number of these so-called ‘probate caveats’ – a formal notice that temporarily halts the administration of an estate – that were filed rose by 12 per cent last year, a Freedom of Information request submitted by law firm TMW Solicitors revealed.
The caveats can prevent probate from being issued for six months. This is commonly used to dispute a will’s validity or when an inheritance is disputed.
Stuart Downey, partner in will disputes at TMW Solicitors, says: ‘Even relatively modest estates can now be worth £500,000 to £1million simply because they include a family home. As the value of estates rises, so too does the potential for disputes between family members.’
One growing source of disputes is over circumstances where the deceased was persuaded or coerced into changing their will.
Unlike many of these cases – where the deceased can no longer express their wishes in person – Paul’s mother is still alive.
So how did it come to this? Paul says he had always been close to his family. Just a few years ago, he would host his sister Susan for monthly game nights, receive glowing praise from his father on work achievements and take Diane to the zoo where they could bond over their love of animals.
More than 11,500 people filed applications to halt the administration of an estate between January and July last year, official Ministry of Justice figures show
But a rift began after his father was rushed to hospital in April 2024. He died a few days later at 75 having amassed a multi-million-pound estate, including investments in buy-to-let flats and convenience stores.
His will appointed his wife, Diane, as executor, with Paul and Susan named as replacements in the event Diane was unable to carry out the duties.
Paul’s mother has little understanding of the family finances, so it fell to Paul and Susan to help sort various affairs in the weeks after their father’s death.
But things quickly started to go awry, first with payments that his sister set up. Paul says: ‘A couple of weeks after Dad died, Susan brought over some paperwork for me to sign to release £83,000 from a joint bank account into my mother’s current account.’
It made sense to Paul. Neither his mother nor sister had any money of their own. If they released this money into his mother’s account, she could keep things ticking over on the family’s estate.
But Paul says he later found out the money never went into Diane’s account. ‘The bank told me she just had a few thousand pounds in her account. I don’t know where it went,’ he says.
Paul’s concerns grew in the following weeks. In June 2024, he had a phone call from the bank’s bereavement team. The agent told him Susan had visited the local bank branch with his mother and had her sign a document that stated the bank wasn’t to speak to Paul about his father or mother’s accounts. The branch was to only speak to Susan.
Paul says: ‘I didn’t know anything about this. The bank now refuses to speak to me.’
The same thing had happened with his father’s property portfolio. He says: ‘I called them and the manager said my mother had turned up with Susan and asked for her to be put in charge of managing the property portfolio. The team was told not to speak to me.’
Through all this, Paul attempted to reach his mother, and finally managed to speak to her.
He says: ‘I kept trying to call but it wouldn’t go through. I got concerned so I went to see her. She said, “You’re not getting anything, I’ve seen the report you wrote about me.”
‘What report? I asked.’
Paul suspects Susan had shown his mother a report in which he had supposedly called her ‘nutty’ and indicated he was trying to take control of the family’s money. Paul denies ever writing such a report.
He adds: ‘I think my mother genuinely believes I tried taking over the rental properties and she keeps telling people I tried to get her “put away”.’
Distraught about the developing situation, Paul took his concerns to social services in the summer of 2024, as he was worried his sister was manipulating his mother for financial gain.
He says: ‘They told me that after speaking to my mother she said she wants nothing to do with me. She told them I’m estranged from the family and I only turned up because I wanted the money.’
Paul was astounded to hear this. In fact, he claims Susan had a poor relationship with his mother.
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He says: ‘I got on better with my mother than my sister did. My mother spent most of our adult life screaming at my sister that she’s just after the money. Why, in the course of two weeks, did my mother rewrite 50 years of history?’
Susan never had a busy life, according to Paul, and lived at their parents’ house throughout her adulthood.
‘She had no friends, never had a boyfriend and had no money. My wife and I felt sorry for her, so we’d take her out with us all the time. My dad had to pay her petrol bill every month and he had to subsidise her at the end of the month too.
‘We couldn’t figure out where all her money was going. She had no outgoings.’
One day while their father was in hospital Susan blurted out to Paul, his wife Louise and another family member that she was in debt. Paul now suspects the debt has been her motivation for trying to secure the inheritance for herself. ‘She must be in trouble. I think these debts are why this has all happened,’ he says.
The final blow came when Paul heard from family friends that his mother had written a will leaving all of her estate to Susan, and he was not to receive a penny.
‘My sister got my mother to give her full power of attorney and got a new will written leaving the entire estate to her.’
Diane previously had no will as Henry dealt with all financial matters, so the estate – which includes a £900,000 family home and £500,000 in land – was set to be divided equally between Paul and Susan when she dies, as per intestacy law.
If someone dies without leaving a will, their estate has to be shared out according to certain rules. If they have no surviving spouse, as would be the case here, then their children each inherit an equal share of the estate.
If his mother didn’t spend any of the £4.5million estate, Paul would have received some £2.25million before inheritance tax when she dies. He had hoped to use the money to buy a new home.
He says: ‘Maybe my mother was manipulated into making that will – but in her head she might believe that what she has been told is right.
‘I’ve now lost my mother, I’ve lost my sister, and I’ve lost my inheritance money that my dad wanted me to have.’
