Legal News

A retired dairy farmer who was not happy with his son’s attitude towards him has disinherited him of £230,000 fortune leaving it to a young woman who was un-related to him.
Raymond Spry, 74, deliberately deprived his son as his mechanic son had discarded the family surname and changed it to Richard Thomas the judges heard.
He left everything including his bungalow in St Austell to Gemma Sweet the grand daughter of a woman with whom he had lived after divorcing Mr Thomas’ mother.
Mr Spry specifically stated in his 2003 will that he didn't want Mr Thomas, or his half-sister, Heather Bolt, to get a penny.
Ruling on the dispute in 2010, Judge Wood said the senior man had "taken a shine" to Miss Sweet who was aged eight when he met her. Now in her 20s, the court heard she was "well educated" and Mr Spry viewed her as having "considerable potential".
In disinheriting his children, Mr Spry had written that he was not happy with their attitude towards him during his lifetime.
The judge said Mr Spry had given his only son a no nonsense "tough love" before they fell out in the 1990s. he had made his son work hard to be a worthy heir but in a no nonsense and uncompromising way.
Mr Thomas said that his father had assured him before their rift, that everything was going to be his one day but leaving nothing in his will was poor recompense for the years of back-breaking work he put in on the farm and in helping his dad to build a bungalow.
Judge Wood agreed that Mr Spry's decision to disinherit his son was an "unreasonable" and "hugely disproportionate" over-reaction to what the pensioner viewed as "great causes of offence", including his son's change of surname.
After hearing of Mr Thomas' parlous finances, the judge awarded him £36,471 from his father's estate to cover his debts.
However, Mr Thomas who had originally claimed about £100,000 from the estate to find himself a new home was left with nothing when, the following year, another judge ordered him to pay the enormous legal costs of the case.
Challenging that ruling at the Appeal Court, his barrister, said that a victory for him had turned into a crushing defeat. He urged the three judges to rule that the legal costs of the dispute should be paid out of Mr Spry's estate - valued in total at £229,000 Lords Justice Laws, Rimer and Patten allowed his appeal against the punishing costs order. Their ruling means the heavy burden of legal bill would now likely to fall on Mr Spry's estate.