Inheritance Provision for Family and Dependants in UK Law

On the other hand, reopening contentious matters or permitting one or more of the parties to add to their case or make a new case should rarely be allowed. Any attempt to do this is likely to receive summary rejection in most cases. It will only very rarely be appropriate for parties to attempt to do so. This necessarily means that the court would only be persuaded to do so in exceptional circumstances, but that expression by itself is no more than a relatively uninformative label.

Curiously, the new statutory provisions do not extend to proceedings under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989, the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 or Part III of the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984.

The concept of maintenance is no doubt broad, but the distinction made by the differing paragraphs of section 1(2) shows that it cannot extend to any or every thing which it would be desirable for the claimant to have. It must import provision to meet the everyday expenses of living. The summary of Browne-Wilkinson J in In re Dennis, deceased [1981] 2 All ER 140 at 145–146 is helpful and has often been cited with approval:

The level at which maintenance may be provided for is clearly flexible and falls to be assessed on the facts of each case. Nor, although maintenance is by definition the provision of income rather than capital, need it necessarily be provided for by way of periodical payments, for example under a trust.

As between married couples, the problem has been addressed (if not solved) by the comprehensive redistributive powers in the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, if the couple divorce, and in the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, if one of them dies. The 1975 Act also gives some more limited help to the survivor of an unmarried cohabiting couple. (Neither, of course, is of any assistance in third party challenges, for example from other relatives.)

Oxley v Hiscock was, of course, a different case from this. The property had been conveyed into the sole name of one of the cohabitants. The claimant had first to surmount the hurdle of showing that she had any beneficial interest at all, before showing exactly what that interest was. The first could readily be inferred from the fact that each party had made some kind of financial contribution towards the purchase. As to the second, Chadwick LJ said this, at para 69:

As a matter of principle, that connection is established by the coincidence of residence and the animus manendi. If a person has chosen to make his home in a new country for an indefinite period of time, it is appropriate that he should be connected to that country's system of law for the kind of purposes for which domicile is relevant.