{"id":4178,"date":"2025-07-18T21:43:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T21:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/4178\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T21:43:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T21:43:13","slug":"daughter-sues-over-250-inheritance-after-sister-was-left-600000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/4178\/","title":{"rendered":"Daughter sues over \u00a3250 inheritance after sister was left \u00a3600,000"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman is suing after she was left \u00a3250 in her father\u2019s \u00a3600,000 will, with her sister receiving almost everything else.<\/p>\n

Laxmikant Patel\u2019s will handed the \u00a3600,000 family home in Harrow, north-west London, to his eldest daughter Anju Patel, 58, while leaving 52-year-old Bhavenetta Stewart-Brown and son Piyush Patel, 62, only \u00a3250 each.<\/p>\n

Anju Patel told a court hearing that their father explained his decision by saying he had come to \u201cmistrust\u201d Mrs Stewart-Brown and that she and her brother had \u201cfailed in their sense of duty\u201d as his children.<\/p>\n

He then left them the tiny cash gifts, saying: \u201cAs a father, I have not forgotten them\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mrs Stewart-Brown is now challenging the will<\/a> in court, claiming her father did not \u201cknow and approve\u201d its contents, pointing out that the \u201codd\u201d will was written in English, a language she claims he couldn\u2019t read properly.<\/p>\n

She is seeking to uphold an earlier will, splitting the \u00a3600,000 estate almost equally between the three siblings, but Anju Patel is fighting back, insisting her father had every reason to all but disinherit<\/a> the others.<\/p>\n

\"Anju<\/p>\n

Anju Patel claims her father gave instructions for his new will to Vijaykant Patel, an associate of hers from their Hare Krishna temple – Champion News<\/p>\n

At the High Court, it was heard that Piyush Patel was a \u201chugely controlling figure\u201d who had declined to scatter his mother\u2019s ashes in India.<\/p>\n

It was also also claimed that Mrs Stewart-Brown \u2013 an inspector with the Care Quality Commission \u2013 had \u201ca bad temper\u201d and took \u201cmassive advantage\u201d of her father when he was alive.<\/p>\n

The judge, Deputy Master Jason Raeburn, heard that Laxmikant Patel was a gentle, hard-working character who had carved out a new life for his family after migrating from Uganda in the early 1970s, working shifts at the Ford motor plant in Dagenham while his wife, Shardaben, ran a newsagent. He died in October 2021 at the age of 85.<\/p>\n

In his previous will of October 2019 he had split his estate equally<\/a>, except for an extra \u00a350,000 bequest to Anju Patel to balance out similar amounts he had previously handed to his other two children.<\/p>\n

But Timothy Sherwin, Mrs Stewart-Brown\u2019s barrister, highlighted the allegedly \u201codd\u201d circumstances in which Laxmikant Patel made his last August 2021 will, soon after he was diagnosed with lung cancer.<\/p>\n

He said Anju Patel claimed that her father gave instructions for his will to Vijaykant Patel, an associate of hers from their Hare Krishna temple who claimed to have also been a friend of her father\u2019s and came to visit him in his bed at the Northwick Park Hospital.<\/p>\n

Vijaykant Patel was not a qualified lawyer, said Mr Sherwin, who added: \u201cBut there is much more to excite the court\u2019s suspicion \u2013 the purported execution of the 2021 will took place shortly after the deceased was admitted to hospital for lethargy, dizziness and coughing up blood.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat will was in English, a language he could not properly read.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given that the earlier will had planned for a mainly equal split of his estate, the shift to cutting out Mrs Stewart-Brown and her brother two years later was inexplicable, argued the barrister.<\/p>\n

But Anju\u2019s representative James Kane claimed that by 2019 their father was deeply disgruntled with Mrs Stewart-Brown and his son, citing his comments to the will writer at the time when Mr Patel said Bhavenetta had \u201ctaken massive advantage\u201d of him.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough he did not act on this view immediately, after his diagnosis with cancer in August 2021, he decided to act,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As executor of the estate Vijaykant Patel is defending the claim alongside Anju Patel, while Piyush Patel, who lives in Texas, is taking a neutral stance.<\/p>\n

The trial continues.<\/p>\n

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman is suing after she was left \u00a3250 in her father\u2019s \u00a3600,000 will, with her sister receiving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[5920,64,63,99,186,5922,5919,184,185,5918,5921],"class_list":{"0":"post-4178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-anju-patel","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-finance","13":"tag-hare-krishna-temple","14":"tag-laxmikant-patel","15":"tag-personal-finance","16":"tag-personalfinance","17":"tag-piyush-patel","18":"tag-vijaykant-patel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}