Ballerina who gave up dance to act as carer wins share of £650k
A PENNILESS ballet dancer who sacrificed her career to look after her dementia-stricken grandmother is entitled to a share of her £650,000 fortune, a judge has ruled.
Lynsey Delaforte, 36, gave up sevenand-a-half years of her dancing career when she moved in to provide 24-hour care for her grandmother Joan Flood in 2008, cooking and cleaning, dressing her, and making sure that she ate.
But when Mrs Flood died in 2016 she left nothing in her will to Ms Delaforte, dividing her wealth and Twickenham home between her son Paul Flood and daughter Annette Dargue, who is Ms Delaforte’s mother.
Ms Delaforte launched a legal claim, backed by her mother, for a share of the estate, but faced opposition from her uncle Mr Flood, 60.
At Central London county court yesterday, Judge Alan Johns ruled that the Royal Academy of Dance graduate should receive £110,000 from her grandmother’s estate. “That is not a reward for her plainly meritorious conduct in caring devotedly for her grand- mother”, said the judge. “It simply represents reasonable financial provision for her maintenance.”
Sarah Harrison, for Ms Delaforte, had argued she was financially dependent on her grandmother, providing roundthe-clock care for at least six days a week and receiving just modest state benefits and £100 a month, which “placed a moral obligation on the deceased to provide for her”.
Mr Flood initially argued that his niece’s care had been nothing more than a “commercial arrangement”, after she had taken redundancy from a marketing job and had nowhere to go.
During a three-day hearing, Mr Flood conceded that his mother had been “one of the most challenging characters” and Ms Delaforte “did a very good job” looking after her. He eventually admitted under cross-examination that it had not been a “commercial arrangement”, and conceded that Ms Delaforte was owed a share of the estate.
She is to receive £66,000 from her uncle’s share of the estate and £44,000 from her mother’s. The court heard she intends to use it to establish a freelance dance teaching business.