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What happened to the claim of undue influence
Image Credit: Wikipedia The family dispute also included an allegation that the 2022 will had been obtained through undue influence. Rosemary had also brought a separate claim under the Inheritance Act 1975, arguing that the will did not provide reasonable financial support for her. Once the court removed the trust and restored the 50% gift as an outright inheritance, the judge decided that she had achieved everything available to her through that claim, so no additional award was made.
Because vanessa was both a trustee and the eventual beneficiary, he also accepted that there was a strong conflict of interest. Legal Futures reported that Knight accepted during the case that there was no direct power in the trust allowing Rosemary to take capital from it.
Instead, the judge said Knight appeared either to have assumed that Briant had a level of legal knowledge and experience that he did not possess or had not fully considered the consequences of the alteration. The judgment did not find that the solicitor had deliberately tried to conceal the consequences. The Royal Courts of Justice of England and Wales. The court rejected that claim. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
The change in will was not properly understood by Briant
The England & Wales High Court has ruled on the will of Mark Briant, a 92-year-old man who changed his will while living with his daughter and son-in-law in 2022. In a judgment dated 23 September 2026, the High Court found that he had not known and approved the relevant part of the will and removed the restriction on his wife’s inheritance. Mark Briant and Rosemary had been together for many years before marrying in 2011. They had made wills in 2012, but their circumstances changed considerably over the following decade. Briant had Parkinson’s disease and his physical health had deteriorated from 2017 onwards, according to the High Court judgment in Elliott v Bateson & Anor. Rosemary was diagnosed with dementia in May 2022. He moved to live with his daughter Vanessa Bateson and her husband Ian in March 2022. A solicitor later visited the Batesons’ home on 11 May to discuss a new will and lasting powers of attorney. Briant’s new will was signed at the solicitor’s office on 20 May 2022. The court found that Briant had initially wanted to leave Rosemary 50% of his estate. The estate was worth about £248,367 and consisted almost entirely of cash or similar assets. The important change came when solicitor Matthew Knight suggested that Rosemary’s 50% should be placed into a life interest trust. His original instruction was to give Rosemary 50% outright, allowing her to use the money as she wished. This meant that the 50% gift to Rosemary became an outright gift instead of one restricted by the trust arrangement.
Because a suitable care package had not yet been arranged, in early 2022, Briant suffered several falls and was unable to return home immediately. The court therefore removed the wording that created the life interest trust. Legal Futures reported that Knight had not read the will over with Briant before it was signed.
The change reduced his wife Rosemary’s inheritance to a life interest in half of his estate, leaving her without an automatic right to the capital itself. A later challenge argued that Briant had not understood the effect of the change. Both had been married before and each had three children. Rosemary and her son James were not aware that the new will had been made at the time. The other half was intended to go to Vanessa’s family. The idea was presented as a way of preventing the money from being available to a local authority if Rosemary later needed residential care. However, the arrangement did not give Rosemary an outright right to the capital. Instead, she was entitled to income from the trust, while Vanessa was to become the ultimate beneficiary of the capital. The court noted that Rosemary would effectively have needed Vanessa to agree to give her money from what would eventually become Vanessa’s inheritance. The central issue was not whether Briant had the mental capacity to make a will. Instead, the court considered whether he knew and approved what the final document actually did. The judge found that the evidence did not show that the solicitor had properly explained the difference between an outright gift and the proposed trust. The court noted that the change had come from Knight rather than Briant. The High Court found that changing this into a trust was a fundamental alteration. Briant needed a clear explanation that Rosemary would no longer have an automatic right to the capital and that access to it could depend on Vanessa giving away part of her future inheritance. there was no record in his attendance notes showing that he had clearly explained that Vanessa would ultimately receive the capital Although Knight pointed to a letter enclosing the draft. The court concluded that Briant had not known and approved the effect of the life interest trust on the balance of probabilities. The judge also found that the evidence about whether Briant had actually read the final will was weak and inconsistent.