Senior judge who learnt illness was dementia ‘dies by his own hand’

SIR Nicholas Wall, formerly the country’s most senior family law judge, has committed suicide after being diagnosed with dementia, his family has announced.

Sir Nicholas, 71, was appointed president of the Family Division in 2010, but had to retire on health grounds in 2012. He was initially diagnosed with depression, before recently finding out he had dementia.

His family released a statement which said: “We are sad to confirm the death of Sir Nicholas Wall, who was not only a highly respected former president of the family division but also a much-loved husband, father and grandfather. Sir Nicholas took his own life having suffered for several years from a rare neurological disease called fronto-temporal lobe dementia that had only recently been diagnosed.”

Sir Nicholas was found dead in Sevenoaks, Kent in the early hours of last Friday. Kent Police attended the scene and asked the Metropolitan Police to inform his wife Margaret at the family home in Clapham, south London. His death was described as “nonsuspicious”.

His family placed a notice in The Times which said he had “died by his own hand on 17th February 2017”.

The death notice included a verse from Tennyson’s poem Tithonus: “The woods decay, the woods decay and fall/ The vapours weep their burthen to the ground/ Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath/ And after many a sum- mer dies the swan.” Sir Nicholas, who was called to the Bar in 1969, was appointed a High Court judge in the Family Division in 1993 and to the Court of Appeal and Privy Council in 2004. He was described by the Family Law Bar Association as “a compassionate judge who thought and cared deeply about the outcome of his cases”. In 2011 he called for cohabiting couples to be given the same legal protection as married couples when they separated. He was also an advocate of so-called “no fault” divorce. He is survived by his wife Margaret, his children Imogen, Emma, Rosalind and Simon and his grandsons Joshua and Arthur. Sir James Munby, who succeeded him as Family Division president, said: “Sir Nicholas’s life was one of very great achievement and he has left us a formidable legacy.”