Advice that goes the extra mile

Eileen was introduced to her SJP Partner, Sean when she was separating from her partner, and looking for practical advice on getting a mortgage.

But following a tragic family accident, the true state of the family’s finances, estates and inheritances came to light. It was a story of forgotten Wills, missing paperwork, and incomplete estates stretching back generations.

Here Eileen and Sean share the moving story of their journey to a secure financial future, for the whole family.

Eileen is a very practical woman. A mother of two, with a demanding and responsible role with a major pharmaceutical company, she can take most things that life throws at her. But even Eileen couldn’t have foreseen the life events that she would be facing, just eighteen months after meeting her SJP adviser, Sean.

A tragic and unexpected event

In 2022, Eileen’s 77-year old father suffered a fatal accident. Eileen, who was with him at the time it happened, was absolutely devastated. But when she and Sean began to look into her father’s finances to deal with probate and inheritance, they had no idea what was waiting for them.

“Dad was about as far removed from having his finances organised as it’s possible to get. Almost none of the paperwork – if we had it – was up to date. It was a mess,” says Eileen.

Eileen thought that her late father might have made a Will many years earlier, which could have been placed in a safety deposit box. “However, I was denied access to the box until I had probate – but I couldn’t get probate until I had access to what was in the box – including any existing Will,” explains Eileen. “When we finally found his Will, we discovered he’d left his estate to his second wife, not to my daughters, as he had said.“

And there was a further Catch-22.

Another incomplete estate in the family

The story didn’t end with one generation. “The deeper we dug,” says Eileen, “the more entangled things became. “ She discovered paperwork suggesting that her grandmother hadn’t left a Will when she died over twenty years before, so her estate also appeared to be incomplete.

In order to wind up her father’s affairs, Eileen first needed to complete her grandmother’s. It was an enormous logistical task, at a very difficult time. “I’ve never felt so out of control in my life,” Eileen says, “as I did that first year after losing dad.”