Bull Ring sculptor and sons lock horns over inheritance
A WORLD-RENOWNED sculptor has been embroiled in a High Court row with his sons over a £5 million inheritance he planned to leave to the National Trust.
Laurence Broderick, the creator of Birmingham’s Bull Ring sculpture, has disinherited his sons, Graeham and Roger, and had changed the locks on the family home, a court heard.
Graeham, his eldest son, began legal action for what he claims he is owed as a partner in his father’s art business, including shares and assets worth £5 million.
Graeham claimed he was “upset and disappointed” by his father’s decision to cut him out. He told London’s High Court that he had been an equal member of a business “partnership” with his parents for 20 years.
He claimed he was rightful owner of a one-third share of all “partnership assets”, which he said included his father’s artworks and valuable copyrights, plus properties in Bedfordshire and the Isle of Skye. “I never thought I’d find myself in this situation. I trusted my parents,” he told the judge.
He said his father locked him and his brother out of the family home after a breakdown in relations in 2019.
“My father changed the locks on the family home so that neither I nor Roger could gain access, which was very traumatic”, Graeham told Judge David Halpern QC.
“We have been kind, decent sons. It’s not a very nice thing for a father to do. He rejected his entire family and his friends,” he later said.
The trial was cut short yesterday as father and son reached a private settlement. Broderick, 87, had been preparing to give his estate to the National Trust, shutting his sons out, a move the prosecuting barrister argued was “antagonistic, vengeful and spiteful”.
The sculptor’s defence counsel replied that the artist was not in a partnership with his son and that he reserved the right to use his assets as he pleased, arguing that his sons knew he was “always a forceful character”.
Details of the settlement have not been made public.