Fight to stop National Trust inheriting tycoon’s £5m fails because he suffers dementia
was struck down by dementia in his 60s.
The judge said Mr Collins was sectioned in 2007 after the attack on his wife.
He has been living in a private care home since 2008 and his wife, being 10 years his junior, had expected to survive him.
But she died in 2014, weeks after contracting “extremely aggressive” cancer. Her half share in the homes passed to her incapacitated husband.
The judge said the dispute with the National Trust broke out in 2005 and “loomed very large” in the couple’s lives.
They fiercely objected to the charity building a bird hide near their home, Broadwater House, in Sherborne.
Magistrate Mrs Collins led local resistance to the scheme, fearing that the “peace and tranquillity” of their garden would be destroyed. “She considered the attitude of the trust’s staff to be rude, patronising and dismissive,” said the judge.
Planning permission for the hide was ultimately refused but the couple “developed a deeprooted antipathy” to the trust.
The couple never had children and the fortune will pass to the trust under the will Mr Collins cannot change.
The case was brought by the executors of Mrs Collins’ estate, who blamed lawyers for the debacle. Relatives said she would have wanted her money to go towards supporting opera.
Dismissing their claim, Judge Cousins said the lawyers had followed Mrs Collins’ instructions and had not been negligent.