Love, not money, at the heart of ugly Lotto feud

AFTER winning his battle for a share of his stepmother’s Lotto win, David Walsh left the courtroom, a man of considerable means. But his first thought was not of splashing out with his €560,000 bonanza – but of his late father, Peter. ‘He’s sitting up now in Heaven looking down, cap in hands – he took care of me,’ said the 52-year-old painter-decorator poignantly.

David insisted in evidence that his father wanted him to have a slice of the windfall. His stepmother Mary Walsh profoundly disagreed.

She felt that David didn’t ‘deserve’ the cash as he wasn’t much of a worker and was estranged from his father for a year.

Also he had been married before and his exes could have a claim.

David got the family home in lieu of cash – the case was closed in her view.

The bitter and long-running dispute about the carve up of a €3.38m lottery win may show the persistence of a son in staking his claim in the face of his stepmother’s intransigence.

But money is only part of it. David Walsh also went to court to prove that this father looked out for him until the end.

When families are torn apart by ugly feuds about money and wills, they often endure an unending stream of platitudes from outsiders about how ‘money doesn’t matter’ and how easy it is to be overtaken by ‘greed’.

THE problem is, though, that while money is very useful in life, it’s also an emotive subject. Even in well-adjusted families, it can wreak havoc, as Mrs Walsh hinted when she said in yesterday’s Irish Daily Mail that winning ‘brings nothing but bad luck’.

She added: ‘It is supposed to be a happy time when you win the Lotto but it’s going on a few years now and it’s a shame we couldn’t sort it out on our own and not in court.’ In blended families like the Walshes, where both the late Peter and Mary were married before, the potential for havoc is magnified.

Peter Walsh had four children before he separated in the 1980s, while Mary had two sons of her own.

Even with the best will in the world, the contest for resources – be it for love and attention or just for spending money – between step-parents and children can be fierce and unrelenting. From the point of view of children, the stereotype of the wicked stepmother as a hostile force between a father and his natural-born children is often real.

Debbie McGee, widow of Paul Daniels, was recently branded a ‘witch’ by her stepson who claimed she had cut him out of his father’s estate.

She had to defend herself, saying her late husband didn’t leave his troubled son money because he feared he would squander it on booze.

In fairytales, the stepmother favours her own offspring while guarding her husband’s assets and affections so zealously that there is nothing left for his children. Consider poor Cinderella sweeping out the kitchen while her stepsisters head to the ball.

The judge’s verdict paints Mrs Walsh in similar terms. He said she had ‘done very well out of’ the Walsh family – even before the Lotto by ‘having the busi- ness, bank accounts and the family home signed into her joint name with her late husband, so that everything passed to her on his death’.

MRS Walsh omitted to mention Peter’s four children in an affidavit to Revenue concerning €50,000 held in an account in his name.

The omission caused her solicitor to note that there could be ‘a problem if the Walsh family go digging as no doubt they will’.

Perhaps David Walsh’s case was not just about love and money.

It may be a green light to his siblings to do some more digging into their late father’s affairs.