The will leaves the farm to the son or daughter who stayed; the other children receive legacies that look small beside the land's paper value; and within six months of the grant, a section 117 claim arrives. It is the most predictable dispute in South-East probate, and both sides of it are usually better prepared for than they realise.
What the claimant must show
Section 117 does not entitle children to equality. The applicant must establish that the parent failed in their moral duty to make proper provision judged at the date of death, against the parent's means and the competing claims. Courts respect the succession logic of keeping a farm intact and preferring the child who worked it; disappointment at the disparity between a legacy and the land's value is not, by itself, a failure of duty.
Where claims gain traction
The claims that succeed tend to feature something more: a child with a genuine need the will ignored, illness, incapacity, real financial precarity; a child whose unpaid labour built the very estate now passing elsewhere; or lifetime provision so lopsided that the will compounds rather than completes it. Conversely, the defence strengthens with every documented advance: the site transferred in the nineties, the education paid for, the deposit given, all of it counts as provision and all of it should be scheduled.
Running and resolving the dispute
The executor holds the estate neutral while the beneficiaries contest; the farming heir defends the plan; the claimant must move within the strict six-month window from the grant. Most of these cases settle, sensibly, since the court's discretion is wide and the family must coexist afterwards, and settlements are implemented by deed of family arrangement on which specialist tax advice should be obtained. The best defence remains the one written before death: a will that records its reasons and a paper trail of what each child received.
This article is general information, not legal advice. For the full practice area, see Farm Estates and Agricultural Probate, or contact the practice to discuss a matter in confidence.