Priti Patel v Nicholas O’Sullivan & Others [2026] EWHC 801 (Ch): High Court upholds July 2020 will and finds £35,000 loan still due

In Priti Patel v Nicholas O’Sullivan & Others [2026] EWHC 801 (Ch), His Honour Judge Jarman KC, sitting as a judge of the High Court, rejected a challenge to a July 2020 will and held that a separate £35,000 loan remained outstanding from the estate to Vimlaben Patel. The case turned on whether the deceased, Kantaben Patel, knew and approved the contents of the July 2020 will, whether that will had been procured by testamentary undue influence, and whether sums said to have been advanced in 2018 and 2019 had ever been repaid. The judgment is a careful illustration of the weight the court may attach to a professionally prepared will, attendance notes, contemporaneous documents and recordings where a family seeks to challenge a late change in testamentary disposition.

Background

Kantaben Patel died in December 2020 aged 73. Her principal asset was the family home in De Burgh Street, Cardiff, where her daughter, Priti Patel, lived. The family’s testamentary arrangements changed over a relatively short period. A September 2019 will divided the estate equally between the deceased’s two children. A further will made in June 2020 was materially more favourable to Priti Patel and left the home to her. The June 2020 will formed an important part of the factual background because the July 2020 will followed only weeks later.

The deceased had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in March 2020 and was taking strong pain medication. The claimant’s case was that by July 2020 she was physically and mentally weakened, vulnerable, and unable properly to understand what she was signing. It was also alleged that Sanjay Patel, her son, and Vimlaben Patel, her sister-in-law, had procured the change in testamentary arrangements by coercion. The defendants’ case was that, despite obvious illness, she remained mentally alert, could walk and converse, and wished to undo an earlier disposition that did not reflect her true intentions.

A central piece of contemporaneous evidence was a signed document dated 4 July 2020, made while the deceased was in a hospice, in which she said that her daughter had become controlling, had pressured her into signing the June 2020 will, and had persuaded her to appoint her as attorney. The document also referred to a £35,000 loan that needed to be addressed. Later that month Sanjay Patel took his mother from Cardiff to stay with relatives in Cowbridge. The claimant said that she had effectively been removed and kept there in order to engineer a new will. The defendants said that she wanted to leave because of her daughter’s controlling conduct and wanted assistance in putting her actual wishes into effect.

The July 2020 will was prepared by solicitor Nicholas O’Sullivan, who was also named as executor. He took instructions from the deceased alone, over the course of more than an hour, and later went through the will with her before it was signed. Clause 3 dealt with the De Burgh Street property and the £35,000 said to be due to Vimlaben Patel. Clause 7 was a no-contest clause. Sanjay Patel accepted that he had paid for the will to be prepared. The proceedings also included a separate but related Part 64 claim in which the executor sought declaratory relief as to whether Vimlaben Patel had lent £25,000 in 2018 and £10,000 in 2019, and whether those sums remained unpaid.

The evidential picture was also unusual in another respect. Priti Patel lacked litigation capacity, acted through a litigation friend, did not attend the hearing, and her particulars of claim and witness statement were admitted as hearsay. By contrast, the court heard oral evidence from Nicholas O’Sullivan, Sanjay Patel and other family witnesses, and it also considered video recordings made shortly before and shortly after the execution of the July 2020 will.

The issues

The court had to decide three questions. First, whether the deceased knew and approved the contents of the July 2020 will. Secondly, whether that will had been procured by undue influence exercised by Sanjay Patel and Vimlaben Patel. Thirdly, whether the alleged advances of £25,000 and £10,000 had in fact been made and, if so, whether they remained outstanding.

Why the challenge to the July 2020 will failed

The judge directed himself by reference to established authority. On knowledge and approval he referred to Gill v Woodall [2010] EWCA Civ 1430. On undue influence he relied on the summary of principle in Edwards v Edwards [2007] EWHC 1119 (Ch). The legal framework was orthodox. Those propounding the will bore the burden of proving knowledge and approval, and the burden of proving undue influence lay on the person asserting it. Testamentary undue influence required coercion, not mere persuasion, opportunity or family pressure.

As to knowledge and approval, the judge accepted Nicholas O’Sullivan’s evidence about the making and execution of the July 2020 will. He found that the solicitor had taken instructions from the deceased alone, had read the will over to her before signature, and had been satisfied that she understood what she was doing. Although the deceased was plainly in some pain, the judge accepted that the pain did not impair her ability to understand the will. He also accepted the evidence that she could walk unaided, talk normally and remain mentally alert. Her command of English was found sufficient for the purpose of understanding the will, notwithstanding that Gujarati was the family’s first language.

The judge did not decide the case simply by applying a routine presumption in favour of a duly executed solicitor-prepared will. He recognised that the July 2020 will followed the June 2020 will so quickly that the evidence had to be examined as a whole. That broader review led him to accept O’Sullivan’s evidence that he had specifically asked why the deceased wanted to alter her will so soon, and that she had replied that her daughter had told her to make the earlier will and that it did not reflect her wishes. The judge treated that account as consistent with the evidence of Sanjay Patel and Vimlaben Patel and with the 4 July 2020 hospice document.

That was one of the most important features of the judgment. The court did not merely find that the July 2020 will had been validly explained and executed. It went further and found it likely that, after the terminal cancer diagnosis, Priti Patel had become concerned about her position in the property, had persuaded her mother to make the June 2020 will, and that the June will did not reflect the deceased’s true wishes. The judge also found it likely that telephone access had been restricted because of concern that other family members might persuade the deceased to change that earlier will. Those findings provided the essential explanation for the change in testamentary disposition.

The claimant argued that parts of the July 2020 will were too complex for the deceased to understand, particularly clause 3, dealing with the house and the £35,000 loan, and clause 7, the no-contest clause. The judge rejected that submission. He accepted O’Sullivan’s attendance note showing that clause 3 had been explained in practical terms, including that Priti Patel would have two years before any enforced sale and could keep the house by paying the £35,000. He also accepted that clause 7 had been explained in simple terms, namely that anyone challenging the will risked losing any benefit under it. Although the court sought reassurance about the permissibility of such a clause, it was referred to Nathan v Leonard [2002] EWHC 1701 (Ch). On the facts, the judge was satisfied that the effect of the relevant provisions had been sufficiently explained.

The judge was likewise unmoved by smaller criticisms of the drafting process, such as an incorrect tick for burial rather than cremation and an error in Priti Patel’s year of birth. He regarded neither as materially undermining the reliability of the will-making process. Nor did he place substantial weight on an unsigned oncology letter from 2024 expressing the view that the deceased would have been mentally unfit to sign legal documents between March and July 2020. No expert evidence had been permitted, and the opinion sat uneasily with the pleaded case, including the claimant’s reliance on the June 2020 will. Indeed, lack of testamentary capacity had not been pleaded at all.

The video evidence reinforced the court’s conclusion. Although one recording made by Sanjay Patel contained questions that were to some extent leading, the judge considered the recordings overall to show the deceased speaking fluently, appearing alert, and making clear that she had acted as she wished and had not been forced. In the short recordings made after the solicitor’s appointment, she expressly said that she had asked to be taken to the solicitors, had done what she wanted to do, and had not been forced. Those recordings plainly mattered. They were not determinative in isolation, but they provided direct contemporaneous support for the conclusion that the July 2020 will reflected her own decision.

Undue influence

The undue influence case failed for a more straightforward reason. The judge accepted that Sanjay Patel and Vimlaben Patel each had motive and opportunity. Sanjay Patel had taken his mother to Cowbridge and had paid for the will. Vimlaben Patel stood to benefit if the £35,000 loan existed and had not been repaid. Those matters gave the allegation some surface plausibility. But testamentary undue influence requires proof of coercion, in the strict sense that the testator’s free judgment has been overborne. Suspicion, family involvement and even strong persuasion are not enough.

On the evidence, the judge was not satisfied that the line into coercion had been crossed. Even if Sanjay Patel and Vimlaben Patel had sought to persuade the deceased to alter her will, the more likely explanation was that they were assisting her in giving effect to what she actually wanted. The allegation that she had been kept in Cowbridge against her will was denied and that denial found support in other evidence. The claimant therefore failed on the undue influence issue.

The separate loan issue

The judgment also resolved the separate dispute concerning the alleged family loan. Vimlaben Patel’s case was that she had advanced £25,000 in 2018 and £10,000 in 2019 to the deceased for the benefit of Priti Patel, and that the sums had never been repaid. The judge accepted that evidence. He accepted the bank records showing the relevant payments and the contemporaneous letters recording the transactions. He also rejected the suggestion that the deceased’s signatures on those letters were not genuine.

A further issue arose because Vimlaben Patel had received £17,750 from the deceased. The claimant contended that this was repayment of part of the debt. The judge rejected that argument. He accepted Vimlaben Patel’s explanation that the money was intended principally for Yash Patel’s 21st birthday car and for certain other distributions after death, not as part-repayment of the loan. On that footing, the full £35,000 remained outstanding from the estate to Vimlaben Patel. The judge regarded that conclusion as helping to explain why the deceased wished to replace the June 2020 will, which had made no provision for the loan.

Why the decision matters

The case is a useful reminder that probate challenges based on want of knowledge and approval or undue influence remain intensely fact-sensitive, but also that they are difficult to sustain where the impugned will was professionally prepared, carefully explained and supported by attendance notes, contemporaneous documents and recordings. Serious illness, family conflict, opportunity for influence and a rapid change in testamentary arrangements do not by themselves establish invalidity. Equally, where a later will appears at first sight surprising, a closely related financial issue may provide the explanation rather than a ground for suspicion. On the judge’s findings, that is what happened here.

Further Reading

Contesting a Will – Will Dispute Solicitors

Inheritance disputes

Parfitt v Jones [2025] EWHC 1552 (Ch), testamentary capacity

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