Viscount to lose £2m family home after cash-poor pop star sister wins legal fight
Bitter feud over country estate given to ancestors by William the Conqueror aired in the High Court
AN “EXTREMELY wealthy” viscount has lost his legal battle with his pop star sister with “a desperate need for money” over their £2million inheritance.
Thomas, Viscount Savernake, was accused of “ignoring his responsibilities” towards Lady Catherine Anna Brudenell-bruce, also known as Bo Bruce, the singer and 2012 runner-up on The Voice UK television show, in an “unfortunate case of sibling mistrust”.
He had been acting as executor of the estate left to them by their mother, Lady Rosamund, the former Countess of Cardigan, who died in 2012 from cancer at the age of 63. The inheritance was made up largely of Leigh Hill House, a sixbedroom, ivy-clad family home the countess received as part of her divorce from David Brudenell-bruce, the Earl of Cardigan, in 2009.
But the High Court heard that despite it being nearly 10 years since the mother’s death, the 40-year-old viscount had still not moved out of their Wiltshire home to sell up in order to share the inheritance.
The court heard Ms Bruce, 37, was “desperate for money” and spent years trying to get him to sell or buy her out of the house near Marlborough.
Last week, she won a court order sacking him as estate executor paving the way for the house to be sold and the inheritance to be shared.
The estate, with a vast forest, has been in the family since it was given to the Brudenell-bruces by William the Conqueror.
Deputy Master John Linwood, who presided over the London hearing, found the brother had “ignored his responsibilities” to his sister. Ms Bruce, who attended Marlborough College and released her Top 10 album Before I Sleep in 2013, was said to be in “parlous financial circumstances”.
Steven Ball, Ms Bruce’s barrister, said relations had been “fairly amicable” between the siblings immediately after the death of their mother, the cookery writer Rosamund Winkley. However, while Ms Bruce initially wanted the house to remain in the family, she changed her mind in 2015. She eventually moved to Somerset, while her brother continued living at the house, paying her £20,000-a-year rent in lieu of ownership.
He also advanced her loans – the exact amount was disputed – as well as paying £11,000 towards her wedding. In 2018, she wrote to her brother and his lawyers explaining she felt “locked into ownership” of a house she did not inhabit but was her “only financial security”. “If Tom doesn’t buy out, then it is only fair that it be sold,” she wrote. Describing the dispute as “an unfortunate case of sibling distrust”, Deputy Master Linwood said he did not accept the administration of the estate would be carried out properly if the viscount remained executor. The judge insisted he found no “wrongdoing” on the brother’s part, but appointed an independent executor so the home could be sold.