Inheritance Act 1975 claims explained: who can apply, the deadline and what courts assess

A claim about provision, not fairness

In England and Wales you can leave your estate to whoever you like. The Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 is the main exception to that freedom. It allows six defined categories of people to ask a court for reasonable financial provision from an estate when the will, or the intestacy rules where there is no will, leaves them without it. Two points sit at the heart of the Act and are worth stating up front. First, a 1975 Act claim is not a challenge to the will's validity: the will stands, and the court decides whether its outcome makes adequate provision for the applicant. Second, the test is provision and need, not fairness. A court under this Act is not asking whether the distribution was just or equal; it is asking whether a specific eligible person has been left without the provision the law says is reasonable for them.

This article explains the framework as it stands: who can apply, the standard the court applies, the six-month time limit, and the orders available. It is general information about how the law works, not legal or financial advice, and anyone personally affected should speak to a contentious probate solicitor early.

Who can claim: the six statutory categories

Eligibility is a closed list. If you do not fit one of the categories in section 1(1) of the Act, you cannot apply, however close you were to the person who died. The categories are:

Category	Who it covers	Standard of provision
(a) Spouse or civil partner	The husband, wife or civil partner of the deceased at the date of death	Surviving-spouse standard (not limited to maintenance)
(b) Former spouse or civil partner	A former husband, wife or civil partner who has not remarried or formed a new civil partnership	Maintenance standard
(ba) Cohabitant	Someone who lived in the same household as the deceased, as if a married couple or civil partners, for the whole two years immediately before the death	Maintenance standard
(c) Child	A child of the deceased, including adult children and children born after the death	Maintenance standard
(d) Child of the family	Someone the deceased treated as a child of the family, such as a step-child raised by the deceased	Maintenance standard
(e) Maintained person	Anyone the deceased was maintaining, wholly or partly, immediately before death	Maintenance standard

A few of these deserve unpacking, because they are where people most often misjudge their position:

• Cohabitants (category ba) must satisfy the two-year test: living in the same household, as a couple, for the whole two years ending with the death. There is no common-law marriage in England and Wales, so an unmarried partner who inherits nothing under a will or under intestacy has this category as their principal statutory route. Our guide to intestacy rules for unmarried partners explains why cohabitants receive nothing automatically when there is no will.
• Children (category c) includes adult, financially independent children. Being an adult does not remove eligibility, though it strongly shapes what the maintenance standard means in practice for that applicant.
• Children of the family (category d) covers people the deceased treated as their own child, whether or not there was any blood or legal relationship. A step-child raised in the household is the classic example.
• Maintained persons (category e) depends on actual financial dependence immediately before the death, for example someone the deceased was housing rent-free or supporting with regular payments.

Eligibility is only the doorway. Plenty of eligible applicants receive nothing because the court decides the existing distribution already amounts to reasonable provision for them.

What "reasonable financial provision" actually means

Section 1(2) sets two different standards, and the gap between them is the single most important structural feature of the Act:

• The surviving-spouse standard. For a spouse or civil partner, reasonable financial provision means such provision as it would be reasonable in all the circumstances for a husband, wife or civil partner to receive, whether or not that provision is required for his or her maintenance. This is deliberately generous and is often informed by what the survivor might have received on a divorce.
• The maintenance standard. For everyone else, provision is capped at what would be reasonable for the applicant's maintenance. Maintenance is about meeting living needs at a level appropriate to that person: housing, income, care costs. It is not a route to a share of the estate for its own sake.

When the court assesses either standard, section 3 requires it to weigh a defined set of factors: the financial resources and needs of the applicant, of any other applicant, and of the beneficiaries, now and in the foreseeable future; any obligations and responsibilities the deceased had towards applicants and beneficiaries; the size and nature of the net estate; any physical or mental disability of an applicant or beneficiary; and any other relevant matter, including conduct. The exercise is evaluative and case-specific, which is why outcomes in reported cases vary so widely and why no article, this one included, can tell a reader what their situation is worth.

The deadline: six months from the grant, not from the death

Section 4 sets the time limit: an application may not be made more than six months from the date on which representation with respect to the estate is first taken out, except with the court's permission. Three practical points flow from that wording:

1. The clock starts at the grant, not the death. "Representation taken out" means the grant of probate (where there is a will) or letters of administration (where there is not). If probate takes a year to issue, the six months has not even started during that year.
2. A claim can be issued before any grant exists. Since a 2014 amendment to section 4, an applicant does not have to wait for representation to be taken out.
3. Late claims need permission. The court has discretion to allow an application after the six months, but permission is never automatic, and the case law treats the deadline seriously. Anyone near or past it needs advice immediately.

Because the deadline hangs off the grant, knowing whether a grant has issued matters. The government's probate records search lets anyone check whether probate has been granted on an estate in England and Wales, and where a death is recent, a standing search (form PA1S) asks the probate registry to send a copy of any grant issued in the following six months. Executors often wait until the six-month window has closed before distributing an estate, because an earlier distribution can be complicated by a claim arriving within time. Our probate pillar guide covers the grant process itself, and our note on probate solicitor costs explains what professional administration involves.

What the court can order

If the court decides the will or intestacy fails to make reasonable financial provision, section 2 gives it a wide menu of orders out of the net estate:

• periodical payments (ongoing maintenance) for a specified term;
• a lump sum payment;
• the transfer of specific property, a house being the obvious example;
• the settlement of property on trust for the applicant;
• the acquisition of property for the applicant's benefit;
• the variation of certain settlements and of the trusts on which the estate is held.

The court shapes the remedy to the need it has found, and the order rewrites the estate's destination only to the extent needed to make the provision the court has judged reasonable.

How this differs from contesting a will, and from Scottish legal rights

People often reach the 1975 Act while researching three different legal routes, and keeping them apart is half the battle:

• Validity challenges. Arguing a will is invalid (for lack of capacity, improper signing, undue influence or forgery) attacks the document itself. If it succeeds, an earlier will or intestacy takes over. A 1975 Act claim does the opposite: it accepts the will and asks the court to adjust the outcome. The two can even run in the alternative, but they are distinct claims with distinct tests. Our overview of contesting a will in the UK maps the validity grounds, and what it means to contest a will covers the terminology.
• Intestacy. Where there is no will, the intestacy rules distribute the estate in a fixed order, explained in our guide to who inherits if there is no will. The 1975 Act applies to intestate estates just as it does to willed ones: a cohabitant excluded by intestacy is a textbook category (ba) applicant.
• Scotland. The 1975 Act applies in England and Wales, to the estate of a person who died domiciled there. Scotland instead gives spouses, civil partners and children automatic legal rights to a fixed share of the moveable estate, no court claim required. Our companion piece on legal rights in Scotland explains that system and why full disinheritance of family is not possible there.

The categories in practice: one estate, two eligible applicants

A short illustration of how the categories operate, with no comment on merits. Marcus, 58, dies leaving a valid will made years earlier giving his whole £480,000 estate to his two brothers. He had lived with his partner Elena for eight years, and Elena's daughter Priya, now 24, grew up in their household with Marcus in a parental role. The grant of probate issues on 1 March.

• Elena falls within category (ba): she lived in the same household as Marcus, as a couple, for the whole two years before his death. Her claim, if she made one, would be assessed on the maintenance standard, because she was not married to Marcus. Had they married, category (a) and the more generous surviving-spouse standard would have applied instead.
• Priya is not Marcus's child, so category (c) is unavailable, but treatment as a child of the family points to category (d), and any financial support Marcus was still providing could also engage category (e).
• The deadline for either of them to issue a claim without needing permission runs to 1 September, six months from the grant, not from the date Marcus died.

Whether either application would succeed, and what any award would look like, depends entirely on the section 3 factors in their real circumstances, which is exactly the assessment a court, not a guide, exists to make.

If a 1975 Act claim touches an estate you are dealing with

For executors, a potential claim changes the shape of the administration: timing of distributions, communication with beneficiaries and record-keeping all become more delicate, and an estate with a live dispute is firmly outside do-it-yourself territory. Our DIY vs solicitor probate calculator helps you weigh where an ordinary estate sits on that spectrum, but once a claim is intimated, professional advice stops being optional. For potential applicants, eligibility, standards and deadlines are the framework, and everything that matters after that is specific to your facts. A contentious probate solicitor can assess a situation on its real numbers, and the six-month clock makes early contact worth far more than a perfectly researched late one.