Brothers blow £200,000 in failed bid to stop stepmum getting £25k
TWO brothers face a £ 200,000 legal bill after losing a bid to stop their stepmother getting an extra £25,000 in their father’s will.
The costs will wipe out financial adviser Richard Powell and his brother Jonathan’s own inheritance of £62,500 each.
The farmer’s sons were accused in court of bringing the case out of avarice and a dislike of their stepmother. They were said to have hoped she would lack the stomach for a fight.
The brothers had claimed that their disabled father David did not understand what he was doing when he made his final will granting his second wife £125,000. They said an earlier document giving stepmother Ailsa Williamson Powell £100,000 was his last true will, and forced her to go to court. But Judge Marc Dight ruled in her favour and said the brothers were unreasonable not to accept that their father and stepmother were a devoted couple.
He said the sons should pick up the legal costs, expected to be at least £200,000, and condemned them for making the widow go to court.
‘She should not have been put to the trouble and expense of proving this claim on the tenuous basis of challenge advanced by Richard and Jonathan Powell,’ he said. ‘ My conclusion is that their position has not been reasonable at any point in this litigation. ‘ Their stance has, it is apparent to me, been driven by personal issues and not by a reasonable inquiry into their father’s state of mind.’ Central London County Court heard that David Powell, a retired Kent farm manager, died aged 84 in 2012 after a 20-year battle with Parkinson’s disease. His death set his sons from his first marriage – Richard, 54, and Jonathan, 55 – and his second wife of nine years against each other in court. Mrs Williamson Powell, 75, of Littlebourne, Kent, said a will made in 2009 in which she was left £125,000, equal to half the remaining estate after gifts to others, was her husband’s last true will. The brothers were left £62,500will made each.18 monthsBut they earlier said ina which they and their stepmother split the estate three ways was the last valid will to be signed. The widow’s barrister Mark Dencer said the case had come about only because the ‘avaricious’ brothers did not like their stepmother. He claimed they were simply trying to enrich themselves in the hope that the widow would ‘lack the stomach or means to fight’.
Having lost the case, the brothers argued that the £200,000 costs should be paid out of their father’s estate. But Judge Dight said that would result in it being almost completely wiped out. He rejected the sons’ claim that there was a real doubt about the 2009 will which necessitated an investigation into their father’s state of mind. Their ‘ unreasonable’ approach had been highlighted by their continued assertion that Mrs Williamson Powell had driven the will-making process, he said. They were also guilty of an ‘unreasonable failure to accept that the deceased and his wife were a devoted couple and the extent to which she was caring for their father in very difficult circumstances’. The court heard that Mrs Williamson Powell had tried to settle the ‘uneconomical’ case out of court and found it ‘inexplicable’ that it had gone to trial.
‘Trying to enrich themselves’