Millionaire Gill leaves nothing to his Cabinet minister ex
RESTAURANT critic AA Gill left £3.4million in his will, having married his partner of 23 years just weeks before his death.
The writer, who died aged 62 on December 10 last year, decided to wed Nicola Formby, 52, after being diagnosed with cancer.
He bequeathed nothing to his ex-wife, the Home Secretary Amber Rudd, with whom he had two grown-up children.
Edinburgh-born Gill left an estate of £4,796,266, which was reduced to £3,417,878 after paying liabilities such as legal and funeral costs.
He instructed that his estate be kept in a trust controlled by four trustees, headed by his wife.
The beneficiaries were named as Miss Formby, Gill’s four children and descendants, other relatives of his parents and anyone else added by his trustees.
Under tax rules as Gill’s spouse, Miss Formby, with whom he had twins, will not pay inheritance tax on any of the estate she receives. Gill hinted at the tax benefits of marrying his long-term partner in an interview shortly before his death.
Discussing his decision to wed, he said: ‘Initially it was for quite practical reasons: an awful lot of what I am having to think about is Nicola. I said we should probably get married.’
Gill revealed his advanced lung cancer diagnosis in November with characteristic frankness and humour in a piece for The Sunday Times, saying: ‘I’ve got an embarrassment of cancer, the full English. There is barely a morsel of offal not included. I have a trucker’s gut-buster, gimpy, malevolent, meaty malignancy.’
He said he had been left feeling ‘fantastically elated’ after proposing to his Miss Formby, who he always referred to in his reviews as ‘the Blonde’.
The will did not say how the money should be divided, but appeared to make clear that Miss Formby was the prime beneficiary.
It made no mention of Miss Rudd, a former investment banker, who was married to Gill from 1990 until 1995. He previously had a short-lived marriage to writer Cressida Connolly.
Gill and Miss Rudd had children Flora, 26, and Alasdair, 23, before he fell for Miss Formby – a South African ex-model and the mother of his nine-year-old twins, Isaac and Edith.
‘Married after cancer diagnosis’