Fairweather v AG & Anor [2026] EWCOP 24 (T1)

Judgment concerning a statutory will and an application to dispense with service

AG is a young woman who lacks mental capacity and holds a substantial estate following a compensation award from the NHS. Her professional deputy applied to the Court of Protection to dispense with service in an application to approve a statutory will. The will seeks to pass AG's entire estate to her mother, AB, or her brother, GB, as under intestacy rules, AG's estranged father, CG, could inherit equally with AB. The deputy applied to dispense with service on CG, citing AB's concerns that contact would expose her to violence, supported by evidence that CG received a police caution for assault in 2006.

District Judge Ellington dismissed the application to dispense with service. Applying the principles from Re D [2016] EWCOP 35, and acknowledging CG's twenty-year absence and the historical evidence of violence, she found the evidence of the current risk of harm insufficient to override CG's Article 6 right to participate in proceedings that would directly affect his inheritance. At [43] she also notes the decision is a procedural one and not a best interests one. 

Read the judgment on Bailii