The Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 (the “Act”) allows certain people to bring claims against estates if reasonable financial provision has not been made for them.
Who can claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975?
Unmarried partners can bring a claim against their partner’s estate if:
- they were living in the same household as their partner; and
- they were living together as if they were a married couple or civil partners
for two years immediately before their partner’s death.
What counts as living in the same household?
The Court can take a flexible approach when deciding whether people meet these requirements. Previous cases show that a couple can be “living together in the same household” even if they weren’t residing in the same house, perhaps because they were living across two properties or because one person was temporarily in a hospital or care home.
What does “Living Together as if Married” mean in law?
When deciding whether two people were “living together as if they were a married couple”, the Court will be looking to see that the couple acknowledged their relationship in private and in public, and were in a committed and supportive relationship akin to a marriage.
Case example of when a relationship was not treated as a marriage equivalent
The recent case of Matyas v Daniel gives useful guidance on when the Court won’t be satisfied that a couple were living in the same household as if they were a married couple. The case concerned Mr Huan Liu (known as Chris), a clothing designer born in China who later moved to London, and who died in 2017.
Mr Tibor Matyas (described as Chris’s life and business partner) claimed that he and Chris had been living together in the same household as if they were a married couple for at least two years before Chris’s death. Mr Matyas was asking the Court to award him financial provision from Chris’s estate to meet his living expenses and his debts of over £400,000.
Somewhat unusually, the Court accepted that Chris and Mr Matyas had been in a loving relationship, and acknowledged that Mr Matyas probably viewed the relationship as being akin to marriage, but found that on balance they had not been living together in the same household as if they were a married couple. Judge Scott said:
“Although there is some evidence that suggests that Chris and Mr Matyas were living together as a married couple, my view is that the balance of the evidence before me is not consistent with that conclusion. I am confident that Mr Matyas was in a relationship with Chris and I am also sure that, from Mr Matyas’s perspective, he most likely regarded it as akin to marriage.
However, a marriage is necessarily between two persons and it seems to me that Chris was more equivocal about the relationship. Chris presented the relationship to his family as one of business colleagues and consistently did the same in correspondence with his solicitors, including expressly in his discussions for his will executed in the two-year period”.
In reaching his decision, the Judge was persuaded by the fact that Chris had introduced Mr Matyas to his parents as his business partner, and had described himself as “single” when instructing a solicitor to prepare a will for him. There was also a lack of witness evidence and documents to support Mr Matyas’s position.
The Court also dismissed Mr Matyas’s claim for other reasons. Mr Matyas had brought his claim nine years late and the Court was not persuaded that there was a good reason for this, saying that he had been “playing for time” and deliberately delaying matters. The Court also found that that Mr Matyas had no need of financial provision from Chris’s estate, as when Chris had died in 2017 he was capable of living independently and had good employment prospects.
This case is a reminder of the potential pitfalls in claims by unmarried partners, and the importance of public acknowledgement of a relationship for a successful claim under the Act.
If you have any questions about a claim for financial provision, then please get in touch and a member of our specialist team will be happy to assist.