The crucial detail the judges didn’t allow us to reveal

Last week emerged two more twists to a scandalous story that I have reported on more than once, exemplifying just how disturbing are the operations of the ultra-secretive Court of Protection. Teresa Kirk is the grandmother in her seventies who was last year sent to prison for six months for refusing to obey a judge’s order to arrange for an old man called Manuel, whom she had quite legally placed in a care home in his native Portugal, to be handed over to Devon social workers and returned, wholly against his wishes, to England.

Last month, Mrs Kirk was released from prison on the orders of three senior judges, including Sir James Munby, the head of the family courts, who ruled that she should never have been jailed in the first place. But two weeks ago, Manuel died peacefully in the home where he had lived happily since 2015.

Until now we have been forbidden on pain of imprisonment to reveal a crucial detail of the story: that Manuel and Mrs Kirk were brother and sister, which was why she had arranged for his return to the country where they had been born and brought up. Although last week this ban was finally lifted, lawyers for Devon council fought to the last for it to remain even after his death.

But there is a further unhappy twist to this story. After Manuel left England, where he worked for much of his life, the Court of Protection ruled that all his assets, including a four-bedroom house, should be seized and handed over to a “manager” appointed by the court. The first call on his estate would be to pay for lawyers appointed by the Official Solicitor, supposedly to represent Manuel’s interests; although they persistently argued in a series of High Court hearings for the imprisonment of his sister.

The question which now arises is how the Portuguese care home can be paid the £25,000 it is owed for having looked after the old man so well through the last 18 months of his life. Despite having previously insisted that none of his money could be used to pay this bill, the “manager” now says that £10,000 she holds of his “liquid assets” may be given towards it.

But meanwhile, the first charge on the rest of his estate will be the final bill owed to the Official Solicitor. Legal fees to other lawyers alone, according to Mrs Kirk’s own barrister, who, acting pro bono, secured her release from prison, could amount to £100,000.

This has always been a shocking story, raising further huge question marks over the astonishing powers of the Court of Protection, But it still seems far from being finally resolved, even after Mrs Kirk has buried her brother, as he wished, facing out over the sea to the sunset in his native land.