Do you have a question about your will? Yes, I have a Question. When Loose Women presenter Lynda Bellingham lost her battle with cancer in , her blended family was plunged into turmoil. In a Traditional Will which she made in shortly after receiving her cancer diagnosis, she left her entire estate to her third husband, Michael Pattermore, expecting him to leave her share of their combined assets to her sons on his death.
At the same time, Pattermore made a Traditional Will mirroring hers. Bellingham will undoubtedly have felt, at her death, that she could trust her husband to carry out her wishes and provide for her sons. But, with depressing inevitability, it turns out that her trust was misplaced. After some legal wrangling - and much mud-slinging in the press on both sides β the legal proceedings were settled on terms that have not been fully disclosed. Predictably, Pattermore has now taken his revenge on the Pelusos for fighting back, by re-writing his own Will, disinheriting them altogether and leaving everything to his own son and daughter.
In a word: yes. His promise to look after her sons was never legally enforceable. There is nothing in law to prevent Pattermore going back on his promise and re-writing his earlier Will. They only have themselves to blame,' says Pattermore, 'My will has been changed completely and that is all down to their bitterness which is still going on.
This cannot have been the outcome Lynda Bellingham was hoping for when she wrote her Will in Reeling from a cancer diagnosis, she would have been concerned to ensure, should the worst happen β which, sadly it did - that both her cherished husband and her beloved sons were equally well provided for. Or should she protect her children, potentially leaving her husband to do without? But this is a toxic urban myth that blights so many blended families. It genuinely is possible, in a blended family, to provide equitably both for the surviving spouse and for the children of the family.
The first and most important advice for any blended family is to face this issue head-on as soon as possible, discuss it openly as a couple, or a family, and take well-considered, holistic legal advice.
