Supreme court judge Lade Hale said: “This case raises some profound questions about the nature of family obligations, the relationship between family obligations and the state, and the relationship between the freedom of property owners to dispose of their property as they see fit and their duty to fulfil their family obligations.”
“This case was the first of its kind to be brought to the highest level of the UK’s justice system,” said Griffin. “The decision by the court leaves things slightly confused.”
Estrangement
After leaving home in 1978, at the age of 17, to secretly move in with her boyfriend, Heather Ilott’s relationship with her mother Melita Jackson irrevocably broke down.
The two women remained estranged until Jackson’s death at the age of 70 in 2004.
Jackson wrote her will in 1984 and stated that she had had to hear about the birth of her grandson from Ilott’s in-laws.
Jackson stated that she had visited her daughter in hospital and taken gifts but that Ilott “made herself very unpleasant and wished to have nothing to do with me”.
“Therefore, she receives nothing from me at my death,” the will stated.
When updated in 2002, Jackson’s wish that her daughter inherit nothing was restated in her will. She also instructed her executors to resist any claims that Ilott might make.
Ilott was aware of her mother’s wishes.
Charities
Jackson left her estate to three animal charities, The Blue Cross, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), with which she had had no particular connection during her lifetime.
The estate, of which the largest element was a house in the home countries, was valued at around £486,000.
