Inheritance battle: Sydney woman who went to court over $3m estate faces huge legal bill

It’s a case that serves as a chilling warning to family members considering fighting for a larger share of an inheritance.

A Sydney woman who received more than $450,000 of her late father’s $3 million estate launched NSW Supreme Court proceedings to increase her slice of the assets.

The judge did not accept the woman had “fallen on hard times”. Credit: Aresna Villanueva

But she lost and was ordered to pay the bulk of the executor’s legal costs of defending the case out of her existing share.

In a decision this month, Justice Hayley Bennett said she accepted the will-maker had a “moral duty to make some provision” for his daughter, the youngest of his three children. But Bennett found that he had discharged that duty in his will.

The woman had been estranged from her father for mo