PC: Champion News Service
A father who left his £600,000 home to one daughter, and just £250 each to his other two children, has had his final will set aside by a court. Laxmikant Patel died in October 2021, aged 85, and the will had been made two months earlier. Reportedly, Anju Patel, together with her brother, was ordered to pay Ms Stewart-Brown’s costs of over £450,000, as well as her own legal fees.
His daughter Bhavenetta Stewart-Brown challenged it, and Deputy Master Jason Raeburn called the circumstances of the 2021 document “highly suspicious” before reinstating an earlier will from 2019.
He told the judge: “The evidence shows a clear pattern of isolation and control over the deceased on the part of Anju and (her husband) which became especially stark when he was in the hospital at the end of his life-when, of course, the purported 2021 will was made .
Anju’s barrister, James Kane, argued that by October 2019 Mr Patel had formed a “sharply negative” view of both Piyush and Bhavenetta. Anju told the court: “I wasn’t estranged from my family, I was with my sister. She chose to disconnect from me.”
The 2019 will had left £50,000 to Anju, with the rest of the estate split into shares of 33 per cent to each of the children and one per cent to a charitable trust. The judge struck out the 2021 will and reinstated the 2019 document, which leaves the three children sharing the estate on roughly equal terms. On the witnessing of the document, he said: “I am not therefore satisfied that a signature was made by (Laxmikant) in the presence of all the witnesses at the same time, so there was no due execution of the will.
‘Courts do not decide these cases based on whether a Will feels fair, according to Cartmell Shepherd Solicitors. On the first, the firm says the father “was terminally ill, frail and in hospital subject to Covid restrictions when the Will was made just 2 months before his death”. Bhavenetta’s barrister urged the judge to rule the 2021 will invalid because it was not properly executed and because Mr Patel, who struggled with the English language, did not “know and approve” its terms. Deputy Master Jason Raeburn upheld a 2019 will and described the circumstances of the 2021 will as “highly suspicious”, The Sun reports.
The focus is always on legal validity.