Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
DAD COULDN’T EVEN SAY NEW WIFE’S NAME
Daughter claws back share of his will
ROBERT, 94
A DAUGHTER who claimed her wealthy but delusional dad was lured into a marriage by a woman 39 years his junior yesterday won her fight for a share of his estate.
Robert Harrington died at 94 in May 2020, 11 months after tying the knot with former lawyer Guixiang Qin. She was 54 at the time of the wedding.
But Robert was so mentally unfit he could not even pronounce his new bride’s name, and daughter
Jill Langley branded it a “predatory marriage”.
Robert’s death sparked a court battle over his final will, written two months earlier, that disinherited Jill,
70, and left everything to his Chinese widow.
And a judge ruled it invalid after finding that
Ms Qin exerted “undue influence and control” over Robert to get her hands on his legacy. It was suggested she then buried him in a pauper’s grave. Executor Jill will now get £200,000 of the £680,000 estate.
Her lawyers said it would have been worth £1million had it not been for payments of up to £350,000 to Ms Qin from Robert, some labelled for “care”.
Recorder Robert Mcallister found
GUIXIANG, 54
Ms Qin had been the “guiding hand” on his will. The pensioner was said to have had paranoid delusional disorder, believing he was a retired Army major. He was estranged from Jill for 30 years and she had not seen him since 2018.
Her barrister James Mckean told Robert’s widow during the trial: “Once you had his money you dumped him in the cheapest possible grave.”
Ms Qin denied the claim, insisting she had “a loving relationship” with him. She will still get £475,000 from the will as his widow.
She met Robert, of King’s Lynn, Norfolk, after spotting a local newspaper advert he placed in 2018 “offering free food and drink at Christmas”. They met for the first time in January 2019 and Robert proposed.
Mr Mcallister told Central London county court that there had been no disinheritance of Jill in the will prior to her dad meeting Ms Qin.
He added: “It would have taken very little to build upon the defendant’s stated views about Mr Harrington’s estrangement [ from Jill], which I find were delusional, and put these into effect for her financial benefit.”