A retired logger who was written out of his mother’s will is still morally entitled to half her estate, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled.

When 98-year-old Smithers resident Dee Drummond died in January 2011, she left her entire inheritance – including a $110,700 home and $55,000 bank account – to her two neighbours.

That came as a shock to her 77-year-old son Bruce Drummond, who had formerly been named sole beneficiary on the estate.

In her will, Ms. Drummond said she’d grown very close to neighbours Casey and Clara Moore, and the couple had provided a lot of help to her over the years.

She had fewer kind words for her son.

“He does not visit me and he does not need anything from me. Bruce is retired and I believe he made good money as a logger,” she wrote.

But B.C. Supreme Court Justice Nathan Smith found the statements about her son were untrue – that Mr. Drummond lives in a mobile home in Quesnel on an annual pension income of about $20,000, and had visited his mother about once a year until 2009, when she asked him to stop because she was self-conscious about her deteriorating condition.

In Smith’s decision, posted online Thursday, he also noted Ms. Drummond had long harboured resentment toward her son.

“Throughout his life, his mother was bitter about the fact that her pregnancy with him had forced her into an unhappy marriage,” Smith wrote. “She frequently referred to him as a ‘bastard.’”

Under the Wills Variation Act, courts have discretion to adjust wills that fail to provide support for the testator’s spouse or children, either for legal or moral reasons.

Though Smith found Ms. Drummond had no legal obligation to her son, he ruled there is a moral duty for parents to take adult children into consideration, barring the absence of need.

“The statement that [her son] did not need anything from her was based on an assumption unsupported by any specific knowledge,” the Justice wrote. “Bruce testified that they never discussed these matters and I find that, given her attitude toward him, Dee was unlikely to have been interested.”

Mr. Drummond asked for 85 per cent of the estate, but Smith found the Moores, who had befriended and taken care of his mother, also had a moral claim to the inheritance.

He ruled the estate should be split equally, with half going to the deceased’s son and the other half to her neighbours.