MUM LEAVES €3.8M TO SONS - DAUGHTERS GET DELPH

Son wins legal challenge to bequest that left delph to his sisters, €100,000 to him but €3.5m to younger brother

A WIDOW left some china, cutlery and €5,000 each to her three daughters – and the balance of her €3.8million estate was to be split among her three sons.

But one son, who got just a tiny fraction of the vast estate, decided to challenge the will

Now, after a bitterly fought sixday hearing, the man has won his case with the High Court ordering the man’s brother to hand over 90 acres of land worth around €1.27million to him. The disparity in the bequests was, Judge Denis McDonald said, ‘extreme’. The three daughters did not challenge the will, the court noted.

The man’s mother had revoked her original 1997 will after she and the plaintiff fell out in 2003.

In the active will, the eldest son, a 53-year-old married father of two, who now works as a hackney driver after being forced out of the family farm business in 2007, received only a three-and-a half acre strip of land valued at €42,000 in 2013 when his mother died – today it has value of €100,000.

In contrast, the man’s brother and executor of the estate and personal representative of the mother, received gifts from the estate to the value of €3million in 2013 – with the 199 acres of land bequeathed to him valued at €3.55million today.

Judge McDonald directed the eldest son to receive around 90 acres of lands. These were lands promised by the mother to her eldest son in 1997 before their falling out and before she revoked her original will.

At the end of a 30,000-word judgment in the case, Judge McDonald found the mother in the family ‘did fail in her moral duty to make proper provision for the plaintiff in her last will’.

In his ruling, the judge said ‘the animus between the parties was palpable during the hearing’.

Judge McDonald said the eldest son had satisfied the high onus that rests on him to demonstrate that there was a failure of moral duty on his mother’s part.

He said that it is notable that none of the daughters had made a claim under Section 117 of the Succession Act and ‘furthermore, neither of the daughters who gave evidence before me suggested that they were living in straitened circumstances’.

He said it became clear that none of the members of the family were on speaking terms with the plaintiff. The father had died in 1996 with all assets transferring to his wife. In a will made in 1997, the mother left a substantial part of the farm to the plaintiff, her oldest son. However, in 2003, she made a new will revoking the 1997 will. Under that 2003 will, the area of land which she proposed to give to the eldest son was very substantially reduced.

The judge also found the plaintiff’s contribution to the farm in the period up to his father’s death was significantly more extensive than that of his brothers.

The three sons all left school at the age of 15. Judge McDonald said the parents were keen for the daughters to complete their Leaving Cert.

Judge McDonald pointed out the plaintiff’s counsel was very critical that on the evening of the fifth day of the hearing, the defendant made an offer at 4.07pm to settle the proceedings but was to remain open only until the end of the business that day.