Legal bill of £220,000 for sisters who challenged grandfather’s will after he left them £50 each
Five sisters who challenged their grandfather’s will, which handed them just £50 each, have been landed with £220,000 in legal bills.
Frederick Ward Snr, a retired soldier, died in 2020, splitting almost all his estate between his children, Terry Ward and Susan Wiltshire.
However, his late son Fred Jnr’s five adult children received just £50 each as he claimed they didn’t visit him often.
The sisters, Carol Gowing, Angela St Marseille, Amanda Higginbotham, Christine Ward and Janet Pett, sued, claiming they should have got their late father’s one-third share of their grandfather’s money. Their case was thrown out by the High Court in March.
After a hearing, the five sisters have now been left facing a £220,000 bill to cover their aunt and uncle’s legal costs as well as their own lawyers’ bills. It means the sisters are set to pay more than what they would have received had they won the case.
At the hearing last week, a judge decided that the cause of the legal battle had been the change in the relationship between the sisters and their grandfather and ordered them to pay the full amount.
Ward, from South Ealing, west London, had been “upset” that his granddaughters had not visited when he was in hospital three times with a lung condition, a court heard during a trial last year.
A shouting match broke out when his final will was read out after his death. From a fortune valued at around £500,000, his granddaughters were handed envelopes containing just £50 each in cash.
The sisters sued, claiming that their grandfather’s last will had been invalid, and that he had been “coerced” into making it by Terry Ward and Ms Wiltshire.
The case was dismissed in March by Master James Brightwell, a High Court judge, who ruled that it had been “entirely rational” for the “disappointed” grandfather to cut out his grandchildren because of their “very limited contact” with him in his latter years.
The case returned to court last week for a decision on who would pay the lawyers’ bills for the case.
Both sides blamed each other for starting the court fight.
James McKean, a lawyer representing the sisters, said they had been “compelled to issue proceedings” after the reading of the will.
Maxwell Myers, for Terry Ward and Ms Wiltshire, said the pair had been forced to defend themselves given the allegations against them.
The judge decided in favour of the pair and ordered the five sisters to pay £100,000 up front towards a total defence legal bill estimated at £136,470, with VAT to be added on.
The sisters’ own legal costs were £85,688.50.
