Sons sue father who killed wife in divorce row for £1.5million
A WEALTHY businessman who stabbed his ex-wife to death in a divorce row is being sued by his two sons for £1.5million.
Ben Workman, 27, and his brother Nicholas, 23, claim their father Ian would have had to hand over half his fortune to their mother Susan in a divorce settlement had she lived.
The brothers’ lawyers argue that the former car dealer will have ‘profited’ from his murder if he is allowed to keep his £3.3million fortune intact.
Workman, 63, stabbed his wife in the heart with a kitchen knife during a frenzied row at the family’s farmhouse in Edgworth, near Bolton, in April 2011.
The father of three snapped as they argued over the financial settlement of the divorce. Mrs Workman, 55, was insisting she should receive £1.4million.
Despite claiming self-defence, Workman was found guilty at Preston Crown Court of murdering his wife of 34 years.
He was sentenced to life with a minimum term of nearly 18 years in prison – but he was able to keep his wealth.
He has since given away most of it to his eldest son Grant, 28, who is standing by him, London’s Civil Appeal Court heard yesterday.
But lawyers for his other sons argued their father ‘would have been ordered to pay his wife some £1.5million had the financial proceedings gone ahead’.
Their QC, Stephen Killalea, said they were now claiming every penny he would have had to give their mother had he not killed her, including legal costs of around £ 500,000. Workman is challenging a judgement for £1,503,579 that was entered against him by a court in 2013. As part of an asset-freezing injunction, he was ordered to disclose his wealth worldwide.
Mr Killalea said Workman had made no attempt to comply with the order and, as a result, should be barred from defending his sons’ claims.
He said the obstruction to the
‘Came at him with a knife’
legal process had led to ‘horrendous delays’ and caused ‘intense emotional strain’ to Ben and Nicholas, deepening the trauma caused by their mother’s death.
Workman’s barrister, Katherine McQuail, said he believed he had been treated ‘ unfairly and oppressively’ by his two sons and insists he did not kill his wife for the money. He had offered her £918,000. During the trial, jurors heard extracts from Mrs Workman’s diary – the last typed moments before the killing.
Writing on her laptop, she recorded how he stormed into their former marital home and threatened to make her ‘pay’ for her claim on his money. She then began to describe him ‘standing, staring at me acro...’ a sentence she was never to finish.
Workman, who denied murder, claimed he had acted in selfdefence when his wife came at him with a kitchen knife and that she was fatally injured in the struggle.
He failed in an Appeal Court bid in March 2014 to clear his name after urging judges to consider ‘fresh evidence’ suggesting it was possible Mrs Workman had stabbed herself.
Yesterday, he watched the case via live video link from jail as his lawyers insisted he had been given no fair chance to defend himself against his sons.
Denying that a ‘profit motive’ lay behind the murder, Miss McQuail said Workman was ‘in temper’ when he killed his wife at the climax of a ‘bitter dispute’. Mrs Workman’s sister Carol Forrester, who is representing her murdered sibling’s estate, is also backing the younger sons’ claim. Appeal judges Lord Justice McCombe, Lady Justice Sharp and Lady Justice Thirlwall have reserved their decision until a later date.