Melita Jackson left £486,000 to animal charities and nothing to the daughter who left home at 17, and the courts argued over the daughter's share for ten years

In 1978, aged 17, Heather Jackson left home without her mother's knowledge to live with her boyfriend, Nicholas Ilott, whom she later married. Her mother, Melita Jackson, never reconciled with her, and attempts at reconciliation failed. Melita Jackson died in 2004, aged 70. Apart from a small gift to the BBC Benevolent Fund, her will left her £486,000 estate to the Blue Cross, the RSPB and the RSPCA, charities she had no connection with in her life. It left nothing to Heather, her only child. Heather Ilott, a mother of five, was living on state benefits in a housing association home in Great Munden, Hertfordshire. She claimed reasonable provision under the 1975 Act. In 2007 District Judge Clive Million found that her mother had unreasonably excluded her and awarded £50,000. In 2015 the Court of Appeal raised the award to £143,000 to buy her home, plus up to £20,000 more, arranged so that she kept her benefits. The charities appealed. On 15 March 2017 seven Supreme Court justices unanimously set aside the Court of Appeal's order and restored the £50,000. Lady Hale, in a separate judgment, called the law unsatisfactory. Ilott's solicitor said she was disappointed but had received the £50,000. The charities kept the rest of the estate.