Put out to pasture
Widow aged 82 is forced off her farm after daughter wins £2.5m will battle
‘Cost of legal action was ruinous’
A GRANDMOTHER of 82 will be forced to leave the farmhouse where she has lived for more than four decades after losing a court battle with her daughter.
Jane Habberfield was left £2.5million Woodrow Farm in the will of her husband Frank, who died in 2014 after suffering Parkinson’s disease.
But daughter Lucy Habberfield, 51, claimed she was entitled to the estate near Yeovil, Somerset, because she had devoted her working life to it and her father had assured her she would take it over when he retired.
A High Court judge last year ordered the pensioner to pay Lucy £1.17million – equivalent to the value of the land and farm buildings but not the farmhouse where she lives. The widow appealed against the ruling but the Court of Appeal dismissed her case yesterday and upheld the decision that Lucy should be compensated for the broken promises.
Describing it as a ‘sad case’, Lord Justice Lewison said Jane faces selling the 220-acre farm in order to pay her daughter and meet the legal costs of the case.
He noted that ‘it seems hard that an 82-year-old woman should leave the house which has been her home for over 40 years’, but said it was the result of the ‘ruinously expensive litigation’.
He added: ‘Although Jane is elderly, she might live for many years. In view of the family breakdown, it was also highly desirable for there to be a clean break.’ He found that the pensioner will not be left destitute but will have enough left from the sale to rehouse herself.
Last night Lucy, who plans to return to farming with her partner Stuart Parker, said: ‘I’m so sad that our case had to go so far and my advice for other farming families is to get together around the table and talk about what you want to happen to your farms.’
Her mother was photographed walking with the aid of a stick as she attended her appeal in London, supported by another of her four children Sarah Cobden. Sarah, 53, was not a party in the case but sat by her mother’s side.
Lucy began working on the farm when she left school in the early 1980s earning just £40-50 a week. She worked up to 87-and-a-half hours seven days a week, got up at 4.30am and had just five weeks’ holiday in more than three decades.
In his judgment on the original case last year, Mr Justice Birss said there was clear evidence that ‘all the Habberfield family had a temper’ and ‘relationships between the women have not been harmonious for a very long time.’
Lucy said that she never had a good relationship with her mother but familial relations deteriorated further when the declining health of her father Frank, who died aged 83 in 2014, meant he was less able to manage the farm.
Sarah and her husband William Cobden, who had experience rearing beef cattle, then became more involved with the farm, which ‘led to conflict’ as Lucy felt that they were ‘telling her how to do her job.’ Two weeks after a meeting with an accountant about the farm’s finances and future in 2013, there was a fight between the sisters in the milking parlour.
‘The topic of animal feed was a particular source of conflict,’ Mr Justice Birss said. ‘One dimension to this dispute was whether the protein pellets should be given to all the cattle or only to beef herd and not the dairy cows.’
Mother- of- four Lucy and Mr Parker left Woodrow later that day and resigned their employment there. She stayed at home to look after her children and Mr Parker got a job as a greenhouse installer.
Milk production at Woodrow ceased in 2015 and since then the business has been based only on beef cattle and arable farming, with the work carried on by Sarah, William and their son.
As well as throwing out Jane’s appeal, Lord Justice Lewison, who sat with Lord Justice Moylan and Lady Justice Rose, also dismissed Lucy’s bid to have her payout increased to £1.6million.