Sibling battle for €27m farm goes to court
Deputy High Court Judge Peter Leaver said the daughter, Lynda Supple, 43, was a “cunning, amoral, selfish and vindictive woman”.
Stephen Supple, 58, who was left €150 a year in the will apparently signed by his late father, Leonard, brought the action challenging the document.
The judge ordered his ruling to be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, but made no findings about who forged the will, made months before Leonard Supple’s death at the age of 77.
The judgment means Mr Supple died intestate and the estate, including the 60-acre Lower Grange farm in Maidstone, will be divided equally between the two children.
The farm, adjoining the M20, is said to have development potential.
In the will, Lynda Supple inherited their father’s estate.
But the judge concluded that Leonard Supple’s signatures were forgeries, because they did not match earlier examples.
Stephen Supple is the son of his father’s first wife, Patricia, whom he divorced in 1955. Ms Supple was born after her father had a short affair with her mother, Margaret Milne. She lived with her mother until she was 10, when she moved to her father’s farm.
He had a close relationship with Stephen, a former jockey and barrister who helped him with running the property as a stud farm.
Lynda still lives at the farm. She claimed her father vowed Stephen would not inherit a penny, after he failed to maintain the stud farm in the 1980s and it was turned into a caravan park.
But the judge said Lynda’s life in a dysfunctional family had given her a “natural cunning”, and that her evidence was unbelievable.
Legal costs of around £100,000 will be taken from her half-share of the inheritance. But first she must prove paternity, as Leonard’s name is not on her birth certificate.
Speaking after the judgment, Stephen Supple called for a review of the law on probate to shore up public confidence in the procedures for dealing with wills.
