Reading the recent High Court decision in Teixeira v Moaven & Ors [2026] EWHC 1215 (Ch), one thing struck me above everything else.
The deceased died in May 2012.
The case came to trial in March 2026.
Nearly fourteen years after his death, there had still been no full grant of probate and his estate remained, in the words of the judgment, “very largely unadministered”.
For anyone involved in a dispute over an estate, that is a sobering thought.
The case concerned the estate of Amir Abbas Moaven, who died from liver cancer at the age of 44. He left a wife and two young children.
His will divided his estate equally between his wife and children, although his children's shares were not to vest until they were older.
The difficulty was establishing what actually belonged to the estate.
At the centre of the dispute were four valuable properties which had been purchased in the deceased's sole name. Declarations of trust purported to confirm that the properties were actually held in equal shares for the deceased, his brother and their mother.
That mattered considerably. If those trust arrangements were genuine, substantial property interests would fall outside the deceased's estate. If they were not, the value of the estate would be significantly greater.
There were also conflict questions arising from the fact that the deceased's brother was both an executor of the estate and someone claiming a beneficial interest in property which might otherwise belong to it.
Proceedings were commenced in 2016 seeking the removal and replacement of the executors. They were eventually removed in 2020 and replaced by independent solicitors.
But that was far from the end of the matter.
Further applications followed. Questions remained about the ownership of the properties, the administration of the estate and claims by the deceased's wife and children under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975.
Eventually, in March 2026, the dispute concerning the declarations of trust reached trial.
The court concluded that the properties had not been held under the alleged informal trusts and that the declarations of trust were shams. They therefore had no legal or equitable effect.
There are important legal issues in the judgment, but as a mediator I was left asking myself a question.
What is it about some inheritance disputes that makes them so difficult to bring to an end, even after years of litigation?
And, perhaps more importantly, at what stages might the parties have benefited from reconsidering their options for resolving the dispute?
The judgment does not tell us whether probate mediation or any other form of ADR was attempted, considered or proposed. We therefore cannot assume that it wasn't.
Nor would it be right to suggest that this was an easy case to settle. There were fundamental disagreements about property ownership, conflicts of interest and serious allegations concerning the trust arrangements.
Sometimes a party decides that a particular issue needs to be determined by a judge.
But mediation does not have to wait until everyone agrees about the facts. Indeed, disagreement about the facts is usually precisely why people are in dispute.
One of the difficulties I see in mediation is that the longer a dispute continues, the more it can become about much more than the original disagreement.
Legal costs accumulate.
Positions become entrenched.
New applications and subsidiary disputes arise.
Things said in correspondence become disputes in themselves.
Family relationships deteriorate further.
People invest enormous amounts of time and emotional energy in proving that they are right.
And once somebody has spent several years pursuing a particular position, changing course can become increasingly difficult.
That is particularly significant in inheritance disputes.
These cases are rarely only about money.
They may involve grief, sibling relationships, second marriages, perceived favouritism, promises said to have been made years earlier and very different recollections of family history.
A court can determine legal rights. It cannot necessarily resolve all of those underlying issues.
One of the challenges in contentious probate mediation is that the dispute is often more complicated than simply deciding how much one party should pay another.
There may be disagreements about what assets belong to the estate, who has an interest in them and who has authority to agree a settlement.
Executors or administrators may have duties to the estate which need to be considered alongside the personal interests of beneficiaries and other family members.
There may be several interconnected claims, with the resolution of one affecting what is possible in another.
And sometimes not everyone who needs to be involved in reaching an effective agreement is immediately obvious.
These are not necessarily reasons to avoid mediation. But they do mean that careful preparation matters.
In a complex inheritance dispute, I would want to understand not only the legal issues but also what has prevented meaningful settlement discussions.
Are there missing documents or unresolved valuation questions?
Are the parties approaching the dispute with very different expectations about the likely outcome?
Are family relationships or personal grievances making direct negotiation particularly difficult?
And are all the people needed to reach an effective agreement involved in the process?
Understanding those obstacles can be just as important as understanding the competing legal arguments.
We cannot know.
Mediation is not a magic wand and no mediator can guarantee that parties will reach an agreement.
There may also be occasions when a particular legal or factual issue genuinely needs judicial determination before meaningful negotiations can take place.
But mediation offers something fundamentally different from litigation.
Instead of asking only:
“Who is legally right?”
it allows the parties to ask:
“Given where we are now, is there an outcome we can all live with?”
Those are very different questions.
A mediator can help the parties examine the strengths and weaknesses of their respective positions, the risks of continuing, the likely cost and delay, and the practical consequences of the available options.
Crucially, mediation can also explore solutions which a court may not be able to impose.
That can be particularly valuable in probate disputes involving several assets, several family members and several interconnected claims.
And even where a complete settlement is not possible, mediation may help narrow the issues, identify what further information is needed or resolve particular aspects of the dispute.
It does not always have to be an all-or-nothing exercise.
There is sometimes a perception that mediation is something to try towards the end of a case, perhaps shortly before trial when the legal costs have already become substantial.
I think mediation should be considered much sooner.
That does not necessarily mean mediating before the parties have sufficient information to make informed decisions.
In contentious probate disputes, there may be good reasons to obtain particular documents, establish the extent of the estate or resolve valuation questions before attempting a settlement.
But there is a difference between having enough information to negotiate meaningfully and waiting until every issue has been fully investigated and every legal argument explored.
In my experience, parties are often ready to have a useful conversation much sooner than they think.
And sometimes mediation itself can help identify what really needs to be investigated and what can be left behind.
In a long-running inheritance dispute, it is worth periodically asking some simple questions:
Sometimes the answer will be that the case needs to continue.
But it is worth asking the questions, and doing so frequently.
Perhaps that is the lesson I take from Teixeira v Moaven.
Not that mediation would necessarily have resolved this particular dispute. We simply don't know that.
It is that litigation lasting many years should not simply continue through momentum.
At various stages in a difficult case, there is value in deliberately stopping and asking whether the way the dispute is currently being handled remains the best way of resolving it.
That does not mean abandoning litigation or overlooking the importance of the legal issues.
It means recognising that, as circumstances change, the options for resolving a dispute may change too.
The answer may still be litigation.
But it might also be mediation.
After fourteen years, that is surely a question worth asking.
I specialise in mediating contentious probate, inheritance and TOLATA disputes, including complex cases involving several parties and longstanding disagreements.
If you are advising clients involved in a dispute that seems difficult to resolve, I would be happy to discuss whether mediation could help, when the timing might be right and how the process could be structured.
Contact me for an informal, no-obligation discussion.