Lady Killearn cuts family out of will infavour of close ‘friend’
WHEN celebrated society hostess Jacqueline, Lady Killearn took up with flamboyant property agent Robert Hay, eyebrows were raised not only as he was several decades her junior, but also because he was an ex-boyfriend of her daughter, Bunty.
Hay’s relationship with Lady Killearn, who died in 2015 aged 105, has, though, proved to be a rewarding one as, I can reveal, she left him her entire fortune in her will.
She bequeathed not a single penny to her son, Victor, the 3rd Lord Killearn, or her daughters, Jacquetta, Countess of St Germans and Roxana ‘Bunty’ Ross, mother of top model Liberty Ross.
Probate documents which have finally been released disclose that Jackie bequeathed her total £626,000 estate to Hay, who lives with his wife, Sarah, at Bickleigh Castle in Devon.
‘ It’s appalling,’ a friend of the family tells me. ‘No doubt, Mr Hay will be delighted.’
Lady Killearn appointed Hay as an executor of her will. The other executor was Jacquetta, but her appointment was revoked in 2006 because of what her mother described as her daughter’s ‘current illness’.
In her will, Jackie described Hay as her ‘partner’. She said she was leaving him everything ‘in thanks for his great help during my lifetime’.
She added: ‘I have not made any provision for my two daughters and my grandson Miles Lampson as I have made adequate provision for them during my lifetime.’
Lady Killearn did not even mention her son Victor, with whom she had a spectacular falling out over her 13-bedroom Jacobean property in East Sussex, Haremere Hall. So rancorous were relations between
them that two funerals were held for Lady Killearn. One was organised by Hay in Devon and a second was later held in London.
The sale of Haremere Hall was initially blocked following High Court action in 2011 by Jackie’s son.
He successfully argued that Haremere, which had been on the market for £4 million in 2004, was under-valued at £1.65 million.
This victory proved short-lived, however: three months before Jack-ie’s death, Haremere was sold for £2.4 million, in a deal brokered by Hay, who is believed to be in his late 60s. The buyer was one of his friends. Jackie was just 24 when she wed 53- year- old Sir Miles Lampson, Britain’s High Commissioner in Cairo, then an 18- stone, 6ft 5in giant towering above her.
Fortunately for Lady Killearn’s children, her home in London’s Harley Street was transferred to a family trust before she died.
It was put on the market last year for £10 million and the proceeds will be divided among them.
Her butler, Paolo Sclarandis, suc-cessfully sued her for unfair dismissal, and subsequently declared Lady Killearn had been ‘ruled by Mr Hay’, who had an adjoining room to hers.