Ping-pong ding-dong!
Table tennis coach in court battle after aunt leaves £2million to her neighbour
A TABLE tennis coach is locked in a £2million inheritance battle after his millionaire aunt left all her worldly goods to a neighbour.
Ada Richards, who died at 92 in 2011, made a will giving everything, including her £1.5million home, to James De Jong, 74.
He became her carer after her husband died and even moved into her home in Highgate, North London, after she broke her hip in 2007.
But her nephew Derek Seager, 73, who won a national award as a pingpong coach, and his brother Ian claim their aunt was ‘afraid of Mr De Jong’ and was pushed into making the will, Central London County Court heard. They also claim that he isolated her from her friends.
Mr De Jong, however, insists that the widow ‘despised’ the brothers’ side of the family, that neither of them had seen her since the 1950s, and they had been tracked down by ‘heir hunters’ after her death.
He told the court his ‘ main concern was her health and welfare’ and he met all her needs until she moved to a care home in 2010.
However, the brothers’ barrister, Gabriel Fadipe, suggested he had told her: ‘Unless she left the house to you in her will, you would not look after her.’ Mr De Jong replied: ‘That never crossed my mind.’
He denied an allegation that he once hit Mrs Richards with a rolledup newspaper and poured a cup of water on her. ‘When Ada was in pain she would say strange things,’ he said. He also disputed Mr Fadipe’s claim that she did not want to see him once she was in the care home.
Mr De Jong wants the judge to pronounce in favour of the will and the nephews want a declaration that she died intestate, meaning they would get everything.
Judge Nicholas Parfitt’s decision in the case will be delivered later.