Judge rejects woman’s bid for elderly partner’s millions

AN ELDERLY millionaire who left £5million to his girlfriend risked being a “victim of his own folly,” a judge said as he refused her High Court bid for the money.

Tina Chantale Joseph was almost 30 years younger than Peter Cundill when he died from an incurable disease aged 72 in 2011.

In his final years Mr Cundill, a Canadian investment expert whose offshore trust fund alone was worth £230 million, “appreciated her companionship” and prior to his death he told the trustees of his fortune that he wished to give her £5 million on top of a £10,000-a-month allowance and the central London flat he had bought her.

But his affection for Miss Joseph was not shared by those who held the purse strings of his Bermudan family trust who perceived her as a gold digger.

Only two instalments of £500,000 were paid to Miss Joseph in 2008 and 2009 and she took her case to the High Court to seek the remainder of the money.

Jenny Bingham, Mr Cundill’s friend and trustee, did not trust her and seemed to view her as “greedy and undeserving”, Judge Charles Purle QC told the High Court.

When Mr Cundill sacked his housekeeper – apparently at Miss Joseph’s behest – that was “the last straw” for the trustees.

They decided she was “interfering too much in his general life as well as having “too much spent on her” and refused to pay her another penny.

Miss Joseph blamed her partner’s solicitors, the law firm Farrer & Co, which also represents the Queen, for the impasse, which cost her £4million. She insisted that she was the firm’s client, as well as Mr Cundill, but her financial interests had been ignored.

Dismissing her claim, however, Judge Purle said she never had any legal right to a share of the financier’s immense fortune. She was the “mere beneficiary” of Mr Cundill’s “largesse” and had “no bargaining position” to protect, he added.

Farrer & Co’s client was Mr Cundill alone and the judge expressed “a great deal of admiration” for the steps taken to ensure that the terminally ill financier was “not the victim of his own folly.”