Sunk by the RNLI
Daughter faces losing home after lifeboat charity wins £300,000 fight over father’s will
A WOMAN could lose her home after the RNLI won a court battle over the £300,000 her father left in his will.
Sonya Young launched a legal fight with the lifeboat charity in 2015 after discovering her father Brian Cole, a former lifeboatman, had ‘disinherited’ her.
Mr Cole left £268,000 to the charity and just £5,000 each to his former partner and daughter in a will he signed off just weeks before he killed himself in August 2013.
Mrs Young, from Dinas Powys, South Wales, has since been fighting the RNLI. She believes her father was not in his right mind when he left his savings to fund the lifeboat in Penarth, Wales, that he once crewed.
But she now faces losing her £260,000 home after she lost her fight against the charity in July last year. Judge Paul Teverson ruled that Mr Cole was in his right mind when writing his will. He said the father made a decision to ‘disinherit’ his daughter after a falling-out.
Mrs Young paid £214,000 of her father’s money to the RNLI but had already spent around £54,000, a court heard this week.
And now, at the request of the charity’s lawyers, the judge has imposed a charging order totalling more than £140,000 on her home which covers the shortfall and the charity’s legal costs. A charging order secures the debt a person has with a creditor against their property. The court was told that Mrs Young may have to sell her property to make up for the money she owes the charity.
London’s High Court heard that Mr Cole, who was worth around £300,000 when he died, had named his only daughter as his main heir in 2008. But in another will he executed in 2012, he largely ‘disinherited’ her in favour of his then partner Angela Saunders.
His last will in 2013 then left both women only £5,000 each.
Mr Cole told the lawyer who prepared his last will that he had been a crew member of the Penarth lifeboat ‘many years ago’ and wanted the RNLI to get most of his wealth.
Daniel Burton, the charity’s barrister, told the court there was a troubled history between Mr Cole and his daughter. ‘The evidence is clear that his intention was to disinherit his daughter and he had already done that pursuant to his previous will,’ he added.
But Mrs Young said her father had a history of drinking and suggested he may have been deluded when his last will was created.
She also pointed out that he killed himself three weeks later, adding: ‘None of it makes any sense.’ But Judge Teverson said the evidence did not suggest that Mr Cole was deluded.
He said the changes he made to his wills ‘are explained by him falling out with his daughter and then with his partner’. A spokesman for the RNLI previously said: ‘Legacies such as those left by Mr Cole play a vital part in saving lives at sea and the charity is extremely grateful.’
‘He disinherited her after a falling-out’