Lawyer’s will that favoured second wife is ruled invalid

A WILL that left a fortune estimated at up to £10 million (€15m) to a lawyer’s second wife was declared invalid yesterday after a bitter legal battle by the children of his first marriage.

Sisters Daliah and Donna Sherrington and their brother Ramon will now get a half interest in their father’s estate and will have the rest when the widow, Yvonne Sherrington, dies.

They argued in Britain’s High Court that the widow had pressured their father, who died aged 56 in a road crash in 2001, into making a will in which he was unaware of the contents.

Yvonne Sherrington, 56, who was not in court, was ordered to pay 50% of the claimants’ costs as well as her own, giving her a total bill unofficially estimated at £150,000.

The widow said in a statement that she was “shocked” by the decision and the findings of Mr Justice Lightman in his judgment.

The judge was highly critical of the widow and her daughter, Nathalie Walker, who drew up the will despite having no legal qualifications.

He said the marriage celebrated in 1999 “quickly turned sour” and Mr Sherrington referred to his wife as Hitler and a witch.

Mrs Sherrington said through her lawyers that she intends to take the case to the Court of Appeal.

Solicitors in the case said that now the will has been revoked, Mr Sherrington died intestate and a “large chunk” of his estate would be exposed to inheritance tax.

Mr Justice Lightman said Mr Sherrington had told friends that his second marriage had been “the biggest mistake of my life” and Yvonne was only interested in him for his money.

He said he had heard evidence that Mr Sherrington had become depressed and withdrawn because of the strains of their “volatile and tempestuous” relationship.

Mrs Sherrington had claimed that her husband’s children, Daliah, 30, Donna, 27 and Ramon, 21, were not close to their father because they blamed him for the break-up of his first marriage to their mother Gloria.

She said Mr Sherrington, who ran a firm of solicitors in north London and a mortgage loan company, had made ample provision for the children and his first wife with life insurance policies and had asked for wills to be drawn up which mutually left their possessions to each other.

The judge, who said his task was to decide if the will was correctly executed and whether Mr Sherrington knew and approved of its contents, concluded: “I am not satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the deceased was ever informed of the contents of the will or ever read it.”

Mr Justice Lightman said Mr Sherrington was a successful solicitor and entrepreneur whose loan business, Barex Brokers Ltd, was estimated to be worth £6m (€9m).

He had also set up a pension fund for himself and his first wife, Gloria, worth an estimated £1.7m (€2.6m).

Mr Sherrington was estimated to be worth around £10m (€15m) in total, but Mrs Sherrington’s lawyers claimed debts may reduce this figure to less than £4m (€6m).

Mr Justice Lightman, declaring the will invalid, said: “I do not accept the evidence of the defendant and Dr Walker that the defendant read the whole of the draft will to the deceased. Their account of this conversation and the circumstances in which it took place is not credible.”