Family Solicitors

A woman who worked on her parents’ farm free-of-charge for years in the belief she would inherit it has been awarded £1.3 million after taking legal action against her mother and father for her rightful share of the farm

The Daily Mail reports that while her sisters went out partying, 45-year-old Eirian Davies stayed at home and milked the family’s herd of cows.

Dubbed the “cowshed Cinderella”, Ms Davies told the court how her sisters would “parade through the poultry shed in ball gowns” while she prepared turkeys for the Christmas market – and she was warned not to “kill the goose that lays the golden egg” by her father if she complained about how she was being treated as a teenager.

“They always told me that the farm would be left to me,” Miss Davies told the court.

“Even on my birthday – when the other girls were having things – they would say, ‘You will have the damn lot one day, it will all be yours’.”

Miss Davies had been paid no wages for her work on the farm until the age of 21 – and thereafter she was paid £15 or more for milking the dairy herd, which she had a passionate interest in while her sisters left home to pursue other careers.

Ms Davies had been promised that she would inherit the family’s 800-acre dairy farm in Carmarthenshire and its dairy herd after her parents retired. However, her parents tried to evict her after a family row.

The court heard how Ms Davies had sacrificed not going to Yong Farmer’s dances as a teenager with her sisters Enfys and Eleri to remain at home to look after the farm.

When she obtained work elsewhere her father had begged her to return to the farm, the court heard.

A draft will Miss Davies had been shown in 2009 revealed that she had been left most of the farm.

However, subsequent to this her parents proposed that the £3.8m farm should be left in trust for all three sisters equally.

The court heard that, although Mr and Mrs Davies had “pinned their hopes” on their daughter, over the years friction between parents and daughter developed over her relationships with men and the prospect she might have children.

At the Appeal Court Lord Justice Floyd said that her parents concerns centred on not who Miss Davies was seeing, but any children that they might have – and how that may impact upon their duties “to keep the business in the family”.

He told the court:

“Her mother referred to a string of men, to whom she referred as ‘wretches’, with kids behind them.”

Ms Davies took her parents to court over her lost youth spent working for no wages for her father Tegwyn, 75, and mother Mary Davies, 76, who had tried to evict her after 30 years of hard work on Caeremlyn Farm.

Although Ms Davies has been awarded £1.3m, her parents are planning to appeal and as a result Ms Davies has yet to receive any of the court settlement. She won her case in 2014 and the final settlement was awarded in court at Cardiff on Wednesday (25/02/15).

Her parents said in court that Miss Davies should be compensated sufficiently for her to be able to buy her own home, but the court ruled this would not be sufficient to compensate her for her suffering and £1.3m would enable her to start her own farm.

The appeal by Mr and Mrs Davies is ongoing and as a result Miss Davies said it would be inappropriate to comment on the case.

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