Current status: Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 17 March 2015
To ask the Scottish Government when it plans to review the legislation regarding intestacy, and how it will consult people who consider that the current law has had a negative impact on them.
<>The Scottish Law Commission (the Commission) reviewed the law of succession and issued a report in 2009: Report on Succession (Scot Law Com No 215). The report made recommendations on a range of succession issues including:
Intestacy (where a person dies without making a will);
Protection against disinheritance;
Protection for cohabitants;
Bonds of caution (a form of indemnity insurance) for executors-dative;
A range of technical issues on jurisdiction, choice of law, wills and survivorship.
The Scottish Government carried out a period of informal pre-consultation dialogue with a number of stakeholders on the report’s key recommendations. Since then the Scottish Government issued a consultation on technical issues relating to succession http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2014/08/1185 in August 2014. Responses are currently being analysed and will inform the Succession Bill announced in the Programme for Government on 26 November 2014.
That consultation paper made it clear that a second formal and public consultation on the more complex and substantive proposals for reform of succession, including intestacy, will follow later this year. Alongside that exercise, an attitudes survey will be commissioned to replicate an earlier study carried out in 2005 – ‘Attitudes Towards Succession Law: Findings of a Scottish Omnibus Survey’
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/07/18151328/13297
The analysis of both will inform the way forward.