£245k payback time
Window cleaner who ‘gave brother’s legacy away in gold coins’ loses case
A WINDOW cleaner who claimed he gave away a fortune in gold coins to the poor and homeless from his dead brother’s estate has been ordered to pay £245,000 to relatives.
A High Court judge accused Peter Ivory, 58, of a ‘monumental breach of duty as an administrator’ in disposing of his brother Mick’s £414,000 fortune.
Mr Ivory had claimed he was ‘doing the right thing’ in following his brother’s dying wish that he did not want his family to inherit his money. The court was told that on his death bed Mick told Peter he disapproved of many of his relatives and his money should go to ‘the hard-working poor and homeless’.
Mick, 61, died without making a will in 2018 and Peter handled his affairs and arranged the sale of his £390,000 home in Wallington, south London. The judge heard that shortly after receiving Tube driver Mick’s fortune, Peter converted most of the £367,000 left after expenses into gold coins. He then claimed he distributed the money to the needy on the streets of Cambridge, the Isle of Wight and Scotland.
The court was told how Peter, from Hendon, north London, legally should have split the money with other relatives. Judge Timothy Bowles ruled he must now find £245,000 to distribute to family members. He said: ‘You may think you took a moral position but what you have actually done is deprive other people of money that is actually theirs – and that is not a moral position.’
Mr Ivory will have to hand over around £100,000 to his brother Alan, £95,000 to another brother John and £50,000 to his nephew Michael. The court was told that Mick’s estate included his beloved lurcher dog Lady and a collection of rare Osmonds pop memorabilia which had been his wife Pat’s before she died four years earlier.
Giving evidence, Peter said: ‘Mick told me to keep it all and, if I couldn’t keep it, to give it away. His whole plan was to make sure they [other family members] didn’t get it.’
He said he passed on the memorabilia to the Osmonds fan club, took in the dog and then converted most of the rest to gold coins. In court, Peter accepted that what he did was against the law, but insisted he considered the rest of the family were ‘entitled to nothing’ morally as he added: ‘Mick worked his whole life – 40 years on the Underground – for that money.
‘I couldn’t give them his money. They didn’t sit holding his hand as he was dying. They didn’t hear what he said to me. I thought my responsibility was to follow my dying brother’s wishes.’
The judge told Mr Ivory he had committed a ‘monumental breach of duty as administrator’ of his brother’s estate by ignoring the ‘legal entitlements’ of other family members. He also ordered Mr Ivory to pay the family’s legal bill – estimated to be £100,000.