Victim shocked when he discovered details of will

Thomas and Ada Davis decided to make their wills with Heather Perrin before she was officially made a judge.

Mr Davis gave instructions to leave €2,000 each to various churches, €2,000 each to Perrin’s children and split everything else between his two nieces.

When he went into Perrin’s office to sign the will, the meeting was rushed as Perrin said she had urgent business to attend to. He was not given an opportunity to read the will nor was it read over to him. He said he didn’t have a problem with this as he trusted Perrin.

The court heard the will Mr Davis signed split his estate between his nieces and Perrin’s two children. After the meeting with Mr Davis, her husband, Albert Perrin, signed the will as a witness.

Several months later Mr Davis received a copy of his will which left out the bequest of half his estate to the Perrin children.

When a new law firm took over Perrin’s practice, they wrote to the Davises querying several irregularities in their legal documents. Mrs Davis asked Perrin for her help in dealing with the firm.

The judge drafted several increasingly irate letters to the firm demanding they stop contacting the Davises and that they return the wills and other legal documents. She had Mr Davis sign the letters before sending them.

On several occasions Perrin sent a friend to pick up the wills but the firm refused to hand them over without proper authorisation from the Davises.

Eventually the firm examined Mr Davis’s will and noticed the bequest to the Perrin children.

They wrote to him asking if it was above aboard. Mr Davis immediately went to the law offices where he was shocked to see the will leaving half his estate to Perrin’s children.

He made a new will in line with his original wishes but still left her children €2,000 each.

That evening the Davises contacted Perrin who said it must have been a mistake by her secretary.

She was later interviewed five times by gardaí during which she claimed the will was in line with Mr Davis’s instructions and that he didn’t want to leave his nieces all his estate because he was unhappy with how they had squandered money from him in the past.

Charges of deception relating to the will of Mr Davis’s wife, Ada, were dropped because her mental state has declined to the point where she is unable to give evidence.