Widow Wins Legal Battle Over Husband's £5 Million Estate

The High Court has upheld a widow's claim that four properties in her husband's name formed part of his estate, ruling that documents purporting to show that his mother and brother shared beneficial ownership of them were a sham.

The couple had married in 2002. The husband had been diagnosed with cancer in 2009 and had died in May 2012, at the age of 44. Nearly a month before his death, while in hospital, he had made a will leaving his estate equally to his wife and the couple's two children.

The day before, however, he had executed declarations of trust relating to four properties. The properties had been purchased between 1996 and 2003 and were registered in his sole name. However, the declarations of trust stated that he wished to record long-standing arrangements in respect of the properties, in that they had been purchased with assistance from his brother and his mother and that he had held them as trustee for them and himself since the purchase dates.

His widow claimed that the entirety of the legal and beneficial interests in the properties fell into his estate. She maintained that the declarations of trust were a sham and the arrangements set out in them were untrue.

The Court noted that, as young men, the husband and his brother had worked together in a number of business ventures. However, there was nothing in their business arrangements to demonstrate that they had agreed that all of their assets would be pooled and jointly owned, let alone that those assets were to be shared with their mother. In 1996, when the husband had bought the first of the properties, his brother had also bought a property in his own name. The plain inference was that each of them had had the means and inclination to buy their own properties. There was no suggestion that the funds used to purchase any of the properties in the husband's name had come from anyone other than him.

The Court found that the provenance of the declarations of trust could be traced from attendance notes and other documents relating to advice the brother had obtained. He had expressed concern that if the husband died, his wife and the children might 'disappear' to Brazil, where she was from. He had wanted to know how this could be prevented and how she could be prevented from having access to funds from the properties.

A batch of declarations of trust setting out alternative beneficial ownerships of the properties had been prepared, all of which were different from the declarations of trust that had been executed the day before the husband had made his will. The Court questioned why, if the declarations of trust reflected the true arrangement, there had been the need to prepare alternative versions. It was clear that the various declarations of trust did not, and had never been intended to, recite any true facts.

The Court concluded that not only had the presumption that the husband had always been the beneficial owner of the properties not been rebutted, but the evidence fully supported the view that he had always been their legal and beneficial owner. The burden on his widow to provide convincing evidence of a sham had been well and truly met.