If you have been reading about contesting a will and the page mentioned the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, close it. Section 27(2) of that Act says in terms that it does not extend to Scotland. There is no application to a Scottish court to rewrite a will because it failed to provide reasonably for you. That remedy simply does not exist north of the border, and a great deal of otherwise sensible guidance will send you looking for it.

What Scots law gives you instead is better in some ways and worse in others, and the first job is to work out which of two entirely separate things you are actually trying to do.

Two different remedies, constantly confused

The first is a claim for legal rights. This is not a challenge to the will at all. The will stands, every word of it, and you claim a fixed share of part of the estate as a creditor of it. You do not have to prove anything about the deceased’s state of mind, the circumstances of the signing, or the fairness of the outcome. You simply have to be a spouse, a civil partner or a child — or the child of a child who died before the deceased — and you have to ask.

The second is an action of reduction, which asks a court to set the will aside entirely on the ground that it was never a valid will. If that succeeds, the estate passes under whatever earlier valid will exists, or under the rules of intestacy if there is none. This is litigation, it is evidentially heavy, and the Law Society of Scotland describes the standard as a high bar.

Legal rights: what they are worth

Legal rights belong to a surviving spouse or civil partner, called jus relictae for a widow and jus relicti for a widower, and to children, called legitim. They arise automatically on death and no provision in any will or any other deed taking effect on death can remove them.

Grandchildren are frequently written off in guidance on this subject, and that is wrong. Section 11 of the Succession (Scotland) Act 1964 provides that where a child died before the deceased leaving issue who survive, that issue has the same right to legitim the child would have had. A grandchild whose own parent predeceased therefore has a claim, taken between that parent’s children.

They are calculated as fractions of the net moveable estate — everything that is not land or buildings, after debts, funeral expenses, inheritance tax and administration expenses have come off. Where the deceased left both a spouse or civil partner and children, the spouse takes one-third and the children share one-third between them. Where there is a spouse but no children, the spouse takes one-half. Where there are children but no spouse, the children share one-half. What is left is the dead’s part, which the will disposes of freely.

The limitation is severe and it is the thing to grasp before anything else. Legal rights do not touch heritable property. The house, the flat, the land — all of it is outside the calculation. Where the estate is essentially a house and very little else, which describes a great many Scottish estates, a legal rights claim is worth very little. The Scottish Parliament’s own research service has made the same point, observing that the restriction of legal rights to moveable property excludes what is for most people their main asset.

Two further things shrink the claim, and neither is usually mentioned. There is no anti-avoidance rule in Scots succession law, so a person who gives moveable property away during their lifetime, or converts it into heritage by buying a house with it, reduces the fund and there is nothing to be done about it afterwards. And where more than one child claims, collation inter liberos may require substantial advances made to one child during the parent’s lifetime to be brought into account against that child’s share.

Usually you must choose between a legacy and legal rights, but read the will before assuming so. Section 13 of the Succession (Scotland) Act 1964 treats a testamentary provision in favour of a spouse, civil partner or child as given in full and final satisfaction of legal rights unless the will contains an express provision to the contrary. A carefully drafted will occasionally directs that a legacy is in addition to legal rights, and then you take both. Where you do have to elect, treat the decision as final; it is very hard to undo, although somebody who elected between the ages of sixteen and eighteen may apply, before turning twenty-one, to have it set aside as a prejudicial transaction under section 3 of the Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act 1991.

Twenty years, not six months

Legal rights are expressly excluded from the five-year short negative prescription by schedule 1, paragraph 2(f) of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973. That leaves them running under the twenty-year long negative prescription in section 7 of the same Act, from the date the right became enforceable, which is normally the date of death.

Being a child at the time does not stop the clock. Section 14(1)(b) of the same Act requires any period of legal disability to be reckoned as though the person were free from it, and the only exception is for the five-year prescription, which legal rights are already outside. So the twenty years runs from the death even where the person entitled was a child. What a young person entitled to legal rights does have is different in kind: the power under section 3 of the Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act 1991 to apply, before turning twenty-one, to set aside a discharge or election made between sixteen and eighteen.

Until they are claimed or discharged, legal rights remain a debt against the estate. That is a substantial exposure for an executor who distributes without accounting for a child nobody mentioned, because the executor may be answerable personally years later.

Attacking the will itself

If legal rights do not solve the problem — commonly because the estate is heritable, or because the person aggrieved is a stepchild, a sibling or a cohabitant, none of whom have legal rights at all — then the question becomes whether the will was ever valid. These are the recognised grounds in Scots law.

Lack of capacity

A person of twelve or over has testamentary capacity in Scotland under section 2(2) of the Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act 1991, which is considerably younger than most people expect. The real question is mental capacity: whether the testator understood the nature of what they were doing, the extent of what they owned, and who had claims upon them. A diagnosis of dementia is not by itself an answer, in either direction. Capacity is assessed at the moment of signing and it can fluctuate.

Facility and circumvention

This is a distinctly Scottish doctrine with no English equivalent, and it is the ground most often pled in Scottish will challenges. Three elements must be established together: facility, meaning the testator was weakened and easily imposed upon; circumvention, meaning somebody took advantage of that weakness; and lesion, meaning the challenger suffered loss as a result.

The elements are assessed collectively rather than in isolation, and they trade off against one another. Where facility is profound, less needs to be shown by way of circumvention. Facility varies in degree, may be permanent or temporary, and can arise from age, infirmity, illness, pain or grief as well as from cognitive decline. A Law Society of Scotland opinion piece describes the combined test as a high bar, and that is the right expectation to start with.

Smyth v Rafferty [2014] CSOH 150 shows what failure looks like. Lord Glennie rejected a challenge founded on capacity, undue influence and facility and circumvention together, and the will was upheld.

The pattern Scottish practitioners describe is that challenges to professionally drawn wills usually fail, while wills produced by a beneficiary without any legal advice are considerably more vulnerable. That is a professional impression rather than a measured rate. No outcome statistics are published for Scottish reduction actions, most sheriff court civil judgments are never reported, and anybody quoting you a success rate for contesting a will in Scotland has made the number up.

Allan Scott against Lorna Reeves and others [2026] SC GLA 57 is the most recent worked example, and a useful one because the facts are so ordinary. A two-page printed pro forma will, filled in by hand by the daughter who stood to benefit, bearing to have been signed in April 2019 by a woman who had been diagnosed with vascular dementia the previous September. Sheriff A F Deutsch reduced it on 24th December 2025 on two separate grounds — facility and circumvention, and undue influence — either of which would have been enough on its own. What settled it was a date: the pro forma had not been published until November 2019, so the will could not have been signed when it bore to have been. On those facts the sheriff was entitled to infer circumvention without separate proof that persuasion had actually occurred, though that is an inference drawn on particular facts rather than an automatic rule.

The decision is written up in more detail, with a link to the judgment itself, in our Scottish case updates.

Undue influence

Undue influence in Scots law is about the relationship rather than the testator’s weakness, and the classic four-element formulation comes from Gray v Binny (1879) 7 R 332: a relationship creating a dominant or ascendant influence; a relationship of confidence and trust; a material and gratuitous benefit conferred to the granter’s prejudice; and the absence of independent advice at the material time.

The difference from facility and circumvention matters. Undue influence does not require the testator to have been weak at all. A perfectly capable person may still be unduly influenced by a solicitor, a doctor, a carer or an adult child on whom they depend. The two grounds are usually pled together, because the same facts often support both.

Defective execution — and the point almost everyone gets wrong

Under section 1(2)(c) of the Requirements of Writing (Scotland) Act 1995 a will must be a written document, and under section 2(1) it is formally valid if it is subscribed by the granter. That is the whole requirement. An unwitnessed Scottish will signed at the end by the testator is valid. This surprises people who know the English rule, which requires two witnesses under the Wills Act 1837.

Witnessing in Scotland does something different. One witness, with their name and address stated, makes the will self-proving under section 3 of the 1995 Act, meaning it is presumed to have been subscribed by the granter and the executor need prove nothing. Where that presumption is missing, the will is not void; somebody with an interest applies to the court under section 4 for a certificate that the granter did in fact subscribe it, and the executry then proceeds.

The presumption can also be knocked out, which is where a genuine challenge lives: if the witness’s signature was forged, if the witness was themselves a granter, did not know the testator, was under sixteen, was incapable of acting, did not actually witness the subscription, or where the signing and witnessing were not one continuous process. And a will running to more than one sheet is not presumed subscribed unless the testator signed every sheet, which catches homemade wills constantly.

Revocation, later wills and children

Since 1st November 2016, section 5(2) of the Succession (Scotland) Act 2016 has provided that revoking a later will does not revive an earlier one. That reversed the previous common law, and it means an assumption carried over from older guidance can be badly wrong.

Section 1 of the same Act provides that where a will confers a benefit or a power of appointment on a person, or appoints them as trustee or executor, and that person is or becomes the testator’s spouse or civil partner, and the marriage or civil partnership is later terminated by divorce, dissolution or annulment, they are treated as having died before the testator. Three qualifications matter. Separation is not enough — the relationship must actually be brought to an end, although a foreign divorce whose validity is recognised in Scotland counts as well as a decree of a United Kingdom court. The rule does not apply to an appointment as a guardian. And it does not apply at all where the will expressly says the person is to take the benefit or the appointment even if the marriage or civil partnership ends.

There is also a distinctly Scottish presumption known as the conditio si testator sine liberis decesserit. Where a will makes no provision for a child born after it was made, the will may be presumed revoked, and that child may apply to have it reduced. The presumption can be rebutted by evidence that the testator intended the will to stand regardless.

When the will is right but the drafting is wrong

Where a will fails to express accurately what the testator instructed, the remedy is not reduction but rectification under section 3 of the Succession (Scotland) Act 2016, and the court may look at evidence outside the will itself. There is an important restriction: rectification is available only where somebody other than the testator prepared the will. A homemade or online will cannot be rectified, whatever it says and whatever was meant. The application must ordinarily be made within six months of confirmation or death, with a discretion to extend.

What you actually do first

If you are worried that an estate will be distributed before your position is resolved, the immediate step in Scotland is not the one English guidance describes.

There is no Probate Registry here and no probate caveat. There is a Scottish caveat, and it is a different animal. A caveat against confirmation is lodged in the sheriff court, because confirmation is sheriff court commissary business. Under rule 2(1)(f) of the Act of Sederunt (Sheriff Court Caveat Rules) 2006 it may be lodged against the disposal of a commissary application, which means an application for confirmation, for the appointment of an executor, or for restriction of caution. Lodge it in the sheriff court that would deal with the executry. Its effect is that the court must warn your solicitor before the application is dealt with, so you can appear and oppose it. It lasts a year and can be renewed. It is an early warning system, not a freeze. The Court of Session has its own separate caveat procedure, but it does not reach confirmation.

Alongside that, intimate your claim to the executor and their solicitor in writing, and date it. If distribution looks imminent, the step is to raise the action and seek interim interdict, on the ordinary test of title and interest, a prima facie case, and the balance of convenience.

Do not assume that freezing the assets is available. Under section 15A(2) of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987, arrestment on the dependence requires the action to contain a conclusion for payment, and inhibition requires either that or a conclusion for specific implement of an obligation to convey heritable property. A bare action of production and reduction contains neither. Whether a monetary conclusion can properly be added alongside the reduction so as to open up diligence is a question for your solicitor at the drafting stage, not a step you can count on.

Which court, and what it costs

Reduction was historically a Court of Session action. Section 38 of the Courts Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, in force since 1st April 2015, sets out the sheriff’s civil competence and includes, at section 38(2)(g), reduction other than reduction of a decree of any court. A will is not a decree, so reducing one is now competent in the sheriff court. That is a real change: it puts the remedy within reach of estates that could never have justified a Court of Session action.

The court’s own fees are modest and precisely knowable. From 1st April 2026, an initial writ in ordinary sheriff court proceedings costs £176 and lodging a caveat costs £60. In the Court of Session, a summons costs £384 and a caveat £55. Those figures rise again on 1st April 2027.

The court fee is not the cost. Solicitors’ fees, counsel’s fees, expert evidence on capacity or handwriting, and — if you lose — the other side’s expenses, are very much larger, and no reliable published figure exists for what a contested reduction costs in Scotland. Treat any confident single figure with suspicion; the honest answer is a range that turns almost entirely on whether the case settles. What can be said is that the expense is routinely disproportionate to modest estates, which is the reason to establish the value of a legal rights claim before committing to litigation.

Civil legal aid is available in principle: both the sheriff court and the Court of Session are courts in which it can be granted, and an action of reduction is not excepted proceedings. There are three obstacles. The first is financial eligibility, which is where most people actually stop — the Board assesses income and capital, and aid is often granted only subject to a contribution. The second is the reasonableness test, under which the Board may refuse where the likely cost is out of proportion to what is at stake or where success looks unlikely. The third is the least understood: the clawback. Where legal aid helps you to recover or preserve property, the Board’s net liability is repaid out of that property in priority to other debts. That is automatic rather than discretionary, and in an inheritance dispute, where recovering property is the entire point, it can consume a great deal of the result.

If you were the partner rather than the spouse

A cohabitant has no legal rights in Scotland. There is no common law marriage and never has been. What a surviving cohabitant has is section 29 of the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006, and it carries two restrictions that catch people badly.

It applies only to the intestate part of the estate — but read that carefully, because it is more generous than it first sounds and most summaries get it wrong in the harmful direction. “Intestate” takes its meaning from section 36(1) of the Succession (Scotland) Act 1964, which covers a person who died leaving undisposed of by testamentary disposition the whole or any part of their estate. So a will that disposes of everything shuts section 29 out completely. A will that disposes of only part of the estate, or one where a legacy has failed and fallen into intestacy, does not. Do not conclude that the existence of a will is the end of it until somebody has read the will.

And the application must be made within six months of the date of death. Not six months from confirmation, and there is no discretion on the face of the section to extend it. Six months is a very short period in which to grieve, discover that there is no will, take advice and raise a court action, and claims are lost to it routinely. Section 78 of the Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Act 2024 would extend the period to twelve months, but that section is not yet in force, so six months remains the law today.

Common questions

Sources

• Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, section 27(2), legislation.gov.uk — the provision confirming the Act does not extend to Scotland
• Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, section 7 and schedule 1, paragraph 2, legislation.gov.uk
• Requirements of Writing (Scotland) Act 1995, sections 2, 3 and 4, legislation.gov.uk
• Succession (Scotland) Act 2016, legislation.gov.uk — sections 1, 3 and 5
• Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006, section 29, legislation.gov.uk
• Succession (Scotland) Act 1964, section 11 (legitim by representation), section 13 (legacies in satisfaction of legal rights) and section 36 (meaning of intestate), legislation.gov.uk
• Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, section 14, legislation.gov.uk — legal disability disregarded
• Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987, section 15A, legislation.gov.uk — when diligence on the dependence is competent
• Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Act 2024, section 78, legislation.gov.uk — recorded as not yet in force
• Courts Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, section 38, legislation.gov.uk
• Act of Sederunt (Sheriff Court Caveat Rules) 2006, legislation.gov.uk
• Sheriff Court Fees Order 2026 and Court of Session etc. Fees Order 2026, legislation.gov.uk
• Facility and circumvention: a high bar, Law Society of Scotland
• Courts in which civil legal aid is available, Scottish Legal Aid Board

This page is general information about the law of Scotland and is not advice on your circumstances. Time limits in this area are unforgiving, and the six-month cohabitant deadline in particular is lost more often than it is met. If you think you may have a claim, take advice quickly — the deadlines here punish delay far more than they reward a leisurely search for the right solicitor.