The £600m dynasty torn apart over the family silver
AN ELDERLY couple locked in a feud with their children over their £600million estate are demanding they hand back paintings and jewellery kept in the family mansion.
Grade II-listed Lyegrove House was once home to property magnate Manny Davidson and his wife Brigitta, and contains more than £17million worth of silver, jewels and art works.
Masterpieces by Thomas Gainsborough, William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds hang on the walls, and the Gloucestershire property is next door to Prince Charles’ Highgrove estate.
Now Mr Davidson, 85, and his 80-year-old wife are demanding their children hand back much of the collection, which they say was left behind when they moved to Monaco six years ago.
The couple are suing their daughter Maxine, 57, and son Gerald, 55, ‘for the return of a large number of valuable chattels located in a country home owned by their children’ their QC, Stephen Rubin, told London’s High Court yesterday.
The ‘ chattels’ refer to some 300 items acquired by the Davidsons over the last 40 years, including an ‘ exceptional’ £13million silver collection. However Maxine and Gerald are counter- suing for 180 items, including £ 3million worth of jewellery.
The couple built up their multi-million-pound fortune through property interests over many years, and used to live at Lyegrove.
Maxine and Gerald bought the Jacobean property in 1993. Their parents insist the cash for it came from ‘income distributed to them from trusts settled by their parents’.
As well as being set in 18 acres of land, the house has tennis courts and a swimming pool and was once reportedly wanted as a home by Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger. But while the older David-
‘They don’t need any more’
sons say that all the family viewed Lyegrove as their country home, the children claim it was a weekend retreat for them.
Two years ago the Davidsons tried to visit the house but were ‘excluded by their children’, Mr Rubin told the court. Giles Richardson QC, representing the children, said that family relations had broken down in 2011 when two earlier disputes about the trusts were settled in favour of Maxine and Gerald. The family are now at loggerheads over hundreds of items and a full trial over the dispute will begin at the High Court on April 25. The ‘most significant aspect’ of the children’s case is Maxine’s claim to own the £3million jewellery collection.
The children claim that they had already paid for the jewellery or that Brigitta had ‘orally gifted’ the items – a claim she denies.
Manny Davidson is a self-made millionaire who set up Asda Property Holdings in the 1960s after leaving school aged 14.
His daughter Maxine is a freelance art consultant and a mother of two.
Meanwhile Gerald is a successful businessman who once worked alongside his father. He lives in the exclusive neighbourhood of Hampstead, North London, and has a passion for flying helicopters and collecting Aston Martin cars.
Two years ago his emotional father said: ‘The children are very well off. They don’t need any more and they don’t deserve any more. I have been kicking myself that I ever set up the trust fund in the first place. That’s what’s wrong with the system in this country. People give away money during their lifetime to avoid inheritance tax.
‘If I had my time again, I would pay only for their education and a first home. After that I would not give them more. They would have to fend for themselves.’