Short shrift for woman as court rejects royalty claim
IT WAS among the grandest of claims that was given the shortest of shrift in the High Court.
A senior judge believes that he has set a brevity record when ruling on a legal bid by a woman who said she was the “heir to the throne of England”.
Malika Benmusa had claimed that the late Princess Margaret had been her mother and asked Sir James Munby for permission to unseal the Royal’s will.
But Sir James, the president of the Family Division of the High Court, dismissed her application in a four-paragraph written ruling and described it as a “farrago of delusional nonsense”.
When announcing his decision at a hearing in London yesterday, he said: “I think I am right in saying it is the shortest judgment I have ever delivered.”
The judge had dismissed a similar claim by the woman earlier this year.
A decade ago, Sir Mark Potter, who was the then president of the Family Division of the High Court, explained how wills made by members of the Royal family were normally sealed on the order of the president of the Family Division of the High Court.
They could only be unsealed by order of the presi- dent of the Family Division of the High Court. He explained the procedure after a man claimed to be Princess Margaret’s illegitimate son and asked for her will to be unsealed. Sir Mark dismissed the application.
In 1960, Margaret wed photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, who was given the title of the Earl of Snowdon by the Queen. The couple had two children before they divorced in 1978.
Margaret was often perceived as one of the most controversial members of the Royal family, and she was romantically linked with several men in the wake of her divorce.
A heavy smoker for most of her life, Margaret’s health deteriorated and she had a lung operation in 1985, a bout of pneumonia in 1993, and at least three strokes between 1998 and 2001. She died at the age of 71 in 2002.