Son to evict his own mother, 91, in feud over family farm
A WIDOW aged 91 faces eviction from her £2million farmhouse after an extraordinary row with her son over a derelict barn and one acre of land.
Margaret Davies has been told by a judge to pay her 70-year-old son Sidney £150,000 following a dispute over who owned the barn.
But she has refused, and could now be evicted and her home sold to cover the debt if she does not pay up within a matter of weeks.
The falling-out has resulted in dozens of court hearings over five years, and has seen even Mr Davies’s son take the side of his grandmother.
It dates back to 1959 when Mrs Davies and her husband Thomas, who died in 1996, moved to the 50-acre Mosewick Farm in Suckley, Worcestershire. Four years later, the couple bought neighbouring Barrow Mill Farm which gave them another house, a cottage and more land.
In 1974, Mr Davies Snr agreed that Sidney could have 1.3 acres and a barn at Barrow Mill Farm for £6,000, so he could convert it into a home for his own family. The court heard that although the sum was never paid, Sidney invested a similar amount in the family’s business, and his father ‘had been happy to see that happen at the time’.
As a result of the deal, Sidney sold his home in Rugby, moved into a caravan on the site and started work converting the barn. But after his father died, the whole estate passed to his widow, Mrs Davies, and she failed to honour the promise that the barn and land would be Sidney’s.
Now, after a series of defeats in court, Mrs Davies faces being thrown out of her home – even though work on the barn was never completed and it is now derelict.
Judges at the Court of Appeal have confirmed orders for her eviction and sale of the farm, so that her penniless son can get what he is owed.
During a previous hearing in the dispute, Judge Daniel Pearce-Higgins QC lamented the family breakdown which had led to the costly battle.
‘This is unhappy and to my mind unnecessary litigation, the product of family disharmony that appears to go from one generation to another,’ he said. Three generations became involved in the court battle, with Sidney on one side and his mother, brother John, 68, and even Sidney’s own son Greg, 31, on the other.
Judges were told that Mr Davies Snr was happy with the arrangement and pleased the land would stay in the family as he was ‘not tolerant of other people and outsiders’.
‘I recall very specifically that the final deal that I would buy the barn was agreed whilst I was working on the roof at Mosewick Farm,’ Sidney said in his evidence.
‘We were talking as I was working, as he was fetching tiles for me.’
Work began on creating the idyllic barn conversion where Judge Pearce-Higgins said Sidney dreamed he could live ‘the good life’. He moved on to the land but the deeds were never handed over, and he now lives in Birmingham with his second wife.
He said he believed his mother would honour the promise after his father’s death, but gradually realised that it would never happen.
By then, he had lived on the land for more than 20 years and spent thousands of pounds doing up the barn.
He launched legal action against his mother in 2011 and in 2013, Judge Pearce-Higgins found in his favour.
However, the judge decided that handing the barn and land to Sidney now would only cause further trouble as his mother and brother would be his neighbours. Instead, he put a price on Sidney’s rights and ordered Mrs Davies to pay him £68,000, plus more than £50,000 in legal costs.
To provide security for the debt – now standing at £150,000 due to interest – Judge Pearce-Higgins put a charge, effectively a mortgage, over the whole of the farm.
Rejecting Mrs Davies’s appeal at the latest hearing, Lord Justice Briggs said it would be a ‘very sorry outcome’ if she lost her home. She has until November 24 to pay up, or an eviction notice and order for the sale of the farm will take effect.
‘Not tolerant of outsiders’