"[42] What is abundantly clear in my judgment is that the overwhelming and longstanding reason why J made no provision to her daughter was that she had left the home of her mother at the age of 17 years to go and remain with a man of whom the mother disapproved. That theme returns again and again throughout the 26 years between 1978 and J's death in 2004. [43] ….it seems to me the only apology which would have satisfied J would have been one in which H in effect rejected her husband. J was obviously very distressed over the death of her husband during her pregnancy with her daughter. Just as the daughter was moving into adulthood at the age of 17, the daughter left home to live with someone else. I am satisfied that J saw that as a rejection and thereafter never overcame that further loss, as she saw it."
"It is obvious that your wish is for me to have none of your estate, which was founded by the sad loss of my father, but never the less I thought you would have liked his grandchildren to benefit a little from what he sadly left 42 years ago. I have to accept that you have rejected me, it very upsetting to know this but you obviously have your reasons but I believe that there is more to your rejection than just my leaving home……"
"In GvG (Minors: Custody Appeal)[1985] FLR 894 , 898G, this House, in the speech of Lord Fraser of Tullybelton, approved the following statement of principle by Asquith LJ in Bellenden (Formerly Satterthwaite) v Satterthwaite[1948] 1 All ER 343 , 345, which concerned an order for maintenance for a divorced wife: 'It is, of course, not enough for the wife to establish that this court might, or would, have made a different order. We are here concerned with a judicial discretion, and it is of the essence of such a discretion that on the same evidence two different minds might reach widely different decisions without either being appealable. It is only where the decision exceeds the generous ambit within which reasonable disagreement is possible, and is, in fact, plainly wrong, that an appellate body is entitled to interfere.' This passage has been cited and approved many times but some of its implications need to be explained. First, the appellate court must bear in mind the advantage which the first instance judge had in seeing the parties and the other witnesses. This is well understood on questions of credibility and findings of primary fact. But it goes further than that. It applies also to the judge's evaluation of those facts. If I may quote what I said in Biogen Inc v Medeva plc[1997] RPC 1 : 'The need for appellate caution in reversing the trial judge's evaluation of the facts is based upon much more solid grounds than professional courtesy. It is because specific findings of fact, even by the most meticulous judge, are inherently an incomplete statement of the impression which was made upon him by the primary evidence. His expressed findings are always surrounded by a penumbra of imprecision as to emphasis, relative weight, minor qualification and nuance ... of which time and language do not permit exact expression, but which may play an important part in the judge's overall evaluation.'"
"........the Act, so far as it relates to applicants other than spouses, is an Act whose purpose is limited to the provision of reasonable maintenance. It is not the purpose of the Act to provide legacies or rewards for meritorious conduct. Subject to the court's powers under the Act and to fiscal demands, an Englishman still remains at liberty at his death to dispose of his own property in whatever way he pleases or, if he chooses to do so, to leave that disposition to be regulated by the laws of intestate succession. In order to enable the court to interfere with and reform those dispositions it must, in my judgment, be shown, not that the deceased acted unreasonably, but that, looked at objectively, his disposition or lack of disposition produces an unreasonable result in that it does not make any or any greater provision for the applicant"
"Counsel for the plaintiff argued in his reply that Oliver J. had found as a fact that the plaintiff was in need of maintenance, because at best his circumstances were near the subsistence level, and possibly below, and that, therefore, the judge should have found that the provisions were unreasonable; but in my judgment that does not follow. The question is not whether it might have been reasonable for the deceased to assist his son, the plaintiff, but whether in all the circumstances, looked at objectively, it is unreasonable that the effective provisions governing the estate did not do so."
"Nor can the claimant assert a claim merely because the deceased's reasons for cutting her out of his will may have been…. old fashioned. Insofar as it is part of my function to assess the deceased's reasons for having acted as he did – and in the final analysis the matter has to be judged by reference to the objective results of what he did rather than by reference to his subjective reasons, the claimant is not entitled to succeed merely because the reasons which commended themselves to a man old enough to have had some memory of the first world war might not equally commend themselves to a judge who was not even born when the Second World War ended."
"I think any view expressed by a deceased person that he wishes a particular person to benefit will generally be of little significance, because the question is not subjective but objective. An express reason for rejecting the applicant is a different matter and may be very relevant to the problem."
".. A good reason to exclude a member of the family has to be a relevant consideration. However, in my view, the recognition by the testator of the status of members of his family and his goodwill towards them… are factors which it is proper to take into account."
"It cannot be enough to say "here is a son of the deceased; he is in necessitous circumstances; there is property of the deceased which could be made available to assist him but which is not available if the deceased's dispositions stand; therefore those dispositions do not make reasonable provision for the applicant."
"Oliver J. nowhere said that a moral obligation was a prerequisite of an application under section 1 (1) ( c ); nor did he mean any such thing. It is true that he said a moral obligation was required, but in my view that was on the facts of this particular case, because he found nothing else sufficient to produce unreasonableness."
"There may have been some confusion in the minds of trial judges that the appellate court was placing a gloss upon the words of the section, and putting some special emphasis upon the requirements of subs (1)(d) so as to elevate moral obligation or special circumstance to some threshold requirement. From the judgments of this court in Re Coventry to the present day, it should be clear that no gloss has been put upon subs (1)(d). An adult child is, consequently, in no different position from any other applicant who has to prove his case. The court has to have regard to s 3(1)(a)–(g) and assess the relevance and the weight to be given to each factor in the list. If the applicant is of working age, with a job or capable of obtaining a job which would be available, the factors in favour of his claim for financial provision may not be of much weight in the scales. As Oliver J pointed out in Re Coventry , necessitous circumstances cannot be in themselves the reason to alter the testator's dispositions. The passage from the judgment of Sir John Knox in Re Hancock (above) is, in my respectful view, particularly helpful to remind us of the right way to approach this class of case under the Act."
"[58]…… A daughter is entitled (indeed would be expected) to make a life with a partner of her choice and have a family of her own. She would reasonably hope that a parent would accept such a choice, and not blame her for it." "[59] The letter and other evidence showed in my judgment that J was capricious and unfair in many of the reasons she gave for excluding her daughter (and grandchildren) from the estate. I accept however that H (and N) contributed to some of the difficulties in effecting a sustained reconciliation."
"[63] … the dominant reason for the failure of those attempts ( the reconciliations) was the inflexible and unforgiving nature of J. I do not accept as H would have me believe that the fault was all on the side of her mother. I am satisfied that she (and her husband, N) have, unwisely, said some hurtful and unpleasant things. There was therefore, I find, some fault on their side too. But I am satisfied that the primary reason for the failed reconciliations was J's unreasonable requirement that her daughter should, in effect, apologise for having loved, married and remained with N against the mother's wishes. J treated this as a rejection of herself, which she was never able to come to terms with as a reasonable parent should. [64] I am satisfied therefore that the rejection by the mother of her only child at the age of 17, and which she then maintained for the rest of her life was unreasonable and this has led to J unreasonably excluding her daughter from any financial provision in her will, despite her daughter's obviously constrained and needy financial circumstances and her daughter's wish for and attempts at reconciliation…"