Sisters fight for share of Hillsborough dad’s £4m
TWO sisters are fighting for a share of their late father’s £4million fortune, blaming his emotional trauma at surviving the Hillsborough disaster for his decision to disinherit them.
Self-made millionaire Thomas Fitzgerald, 54, was on his deathbed and breathing through an oxygen mask in 2012 when he verbally agreed a will that left his daughters nothing.
He argued that Cassie, 29, and Olivia, 26, did not need his money, so bequeathed his cash to his new lover Helen Starkey and to his sisters, Margaret and Catherine.
Now the Liverpool FC fan’s daughters and their mother, Sandra – Mr Fitzgerald’s ex-wife – are disputing the will’s legality in the Court of Appeal.
They claim his experiences on the day of the Sheffield stadium disaster in April 1989 left him so emotionally damaged that he was mentally unfit to make a will.
The court heard that Mr Fitzgerald had been at Hillsborough when 96 football fans, including his brother-inlaw Brian Matthews, were unlawfully killed.
The daughters’ case was rejected by the High Court in 2014, but at the Court of Appeal the sisters are trying again to have the will torn up on the grounds their father did not understand its consequences.
Their barrister, Michael Furness QC, said the removal of the women from the will and insertion of a clause concerning a discount price for shares in Mr Fitzgerald’s company were “infected with suspicion”.
He told three top judges: “It is a remarkable thing to cut them out of the will altogether.”
Mr Fitzgerald was a shopfitter by trade and, with his brother Frank and business partner Paul Henerty, he built up a hugely successful company, Vale UK Limited.
Profits allowed the family to live in a sprawling £2.6million property in Aughton, Lancashire.
He paid expensive tuition fees and helped fund Olivia and Sandra’s love of competing at horse shows.
However, his marriage faltered and he and Sandra were in the process of an “acrimonious divorce” when he fell seriously ill in May 2012.
At the time he had made no plans for his fortune. But after an earlyhours conversation with Mr Henerty at Aintree hospital a will was drawn up and read out to Mr Fitzgerald, who nodded and spoke in agreement through his oxygen mask.
The will left everything to his sisters and Miss Starkey, explicitly leaving out his daughters and estranged wife who he said had “enough”.
A clause also gave Vale UK an option to buy back his shares at what his widow and daughters say was a heavily discounted price.
Sandra was entitled to the house and her husband’s substantial pension pot when he died – but her daughters got nothing.
The court reserved judgment until a later date.