The Section 117 Six-Month Time Limit

Every field of law has its hard deadline; inheritance law’s is the hardest: a section 117 claim must be brought within six months of representation first issuing, and the court has no power to extend it. Not discretion sparingly exercised — no jurisdiction at all. This page exists because families learn that sentence too late, every month of the year.

Why the Law Is This Harsh

Estates must distribute: executors cannot hold assets indefinitely against the possibility of claims, and beneficiaries’ entitlements need finality — so the Oireachtas chose a short, absolute window (shortened, in fact, from the original twelve months) and the courts have enforced it without carve-outs. The policy is defensible; its casualties are the families who negotiated in good faith past month six, the children who “didn’t want to cause trouble yet”, and everyone who assumed a deadline this important must surely have exceptions. It doesn’t. The substance of the claim it governs is at how section 117 works.

Living With the Clock

The discipline, in order: establish the real grant date — public record, a day’s work, never assumed; assess inside the window — merits, estate contents, the spouse-protection constraint, all of it fits in one early conversation; never let talks eat the calendar — negotiations don’t pause the statute, so claims with substance get issued protectively while the family conversation continues (issue preserves; it doesn’t force a fight, and settlement after protective issue is routine); and if the window has closed, map the other doors — estoppel, the emptied-estate toolkit and the rest run on their own clocks: the full map. The one unmanageable position is not knowing the date — and that one is fixable today.