The 3 children of an illiterate man have won a share of £700,000 after a judge overturned their father’s Will in a landmark case

Hope Dillon, Jo-Anne Morris and Leonard Grizzle, children from Kenneth Grizzle’s first marriage to Ena, won their High Court bid to overturn Kenneth’s Will after they were disinherited as result of Kenneth not being able to understand his own Will.

Kenneth died in 2019, aged 83, and left the house in East Ham, London to his children from another relationship with his partner of 40 years Theodora Richefond, a former charity worker. The rest of his estate, which included the Grizzle children’s family home in Forest Gate, East London, went to Theodora, leaving the children with nothing.

The children told the Court that they were aware of Kenneth’s struggles with reading throughout his life and that he must have disinherited them by mistake because he always intended for them to have the family home. As a result of his struggles with literacy, Kenneth could not read and understand the effect of the Will he signed in 2013.

Judge McQuail ruled in the children’s favour finding that Kenneth simply could not have understood that he was disinheriting them. The effect of the ruling was that Kenneth had now died partially intestate, and as a result, each of the three siblings will inherit a £110,000 share of the £550,000 Forest Gate family home, sharing that and the remainder of the estate with their half-siblings.

This article was written with the assistance of Rebecca Turner.