Section 117 of the Succession Act 1965 is Irish inheritance law’s conscience: where a parent’s will fails in the moral duty to make proper provision for a child in accordance with their means, the court can correct it — for a child of any age, from any circumstances. It is also Irish law’s cruellest deadline. Both facts belong in the first paragraph, because families learn the second one too late every month of the year.
Time limits in estate disputes are among the strictest in Irish law — a section 117 claim must be brought within six months of the grant issuing, and the court cannot extend it. Other claims run on their own clocks, some short, some with extensions. Never assume you are out of time, and never assume you have time: take advice promptly. Nothing on this page is legal advice for your situation.
The Claim, Honestly Framed
The test is failure of moral duty, judged from the standpoint of a prudent and just parent: your needs, health and circumstances; provision made during the parent’s lifetime (the education, the site, the business); the estate’s means and the other legitimate claims on it; what siblings received and why. It is not an equality statute — unequal wills stand constantly — and it is not confined to dependent children: adult claims succeed where the whole picture shows the duty failed, and fail where independence and lifetime provision answered it. Two structural facts shape every case: proceedings are heard in camera (the family’s circumstances stay private), and relief cannot reduce the surviving spouse’s protected position — which makes estate structure part of the viability analysis from day one, alongside the emptied-estate questions where assets moved before death.
Six Months: The Whole Strategy in One Number
The claim must be brought within six months of representation first being taken out — and the court has no power to extend it. Not for negotiations that ran long, not for the solicitor who said wait and see, not for the family that hoped to sort it among themselves. The date the grant issued is therefore the first fact of every file (we establish it directly from the probate records if you don’t know it), and everything else — the merits assessment, the settlement correspondence, the proceedings if needed — is sequenced inside that window. If the grant has not yet issued, you are early, which is the only good position in this field; if it issued recently, the window is live and the call is urgent; if you are unsure, finding out takes a day. The one unforgivable outcome is discovering the date after the sixth month — the full challenge landscape beyond s.117, including doors with different clocks, is at contesting a will.
Has the Grant Issued Yet?
That date decides everything. One confidential call establishes it, assesses the merits honestly, and sequences whatever follows inside the window.
Call 01 5827148