Were they entitled to do this ?

flos1964

First off forgive the grammar but i just would like some help with this , May be to just get some perspective if thats the right word...in 1975 my father died...i was 11 years of age and 3rd in a family of four, the eldest a girl, and three boys and my mother. We were farmers farming two farms and it was the accepted thing that the eldest son inherited the other farm about 5 miles from the home place and the youngest son inherited the home farm including the farmhouse. I inherited two thousand four hundred pounds and me and my mother the right to live in the home place for life. I dont know what if anything my sister received because no one talked about it...someone close to the family told me that my father sought out a solicitor who would draw up a will like this that seem harsh on my mother who had worked very hard all her life, we were cattle dealers as well so my father and his brother would go down the south, buy calves and large cattle and send them home by lorry and train and they would have to be walked home from the train station to our home place where they would be fed, watered and housed, this was all the time, she often told me that it was brutal but they knew nothing else ... on top of this she reared us four, fed us ,schooled us and had to have dinners on the table for countless workmen who worked here. They prospered and we wanted for nothing and ma and da were happy but around 1974 i think farming collapsed...it was a hard time for us and my father contracted Leukemia in 1975 and died. well it was all hands on deck for the five of us and we worked hard ....we started milking and the monthly cheque kept our heads above water and we survived. Now il wrap it up.. my two brothers are farming the two farms, have there own families and there own houses but i all ways thought that my mother got a raw deal...just the right to live here...she didnt even get to own her own house...could we have changed this outcome?.

Borzoi

The Succession Act would have allowed her to claim one third of the estate. But I suspect too much water under the bridge now