A judge has made orders concerning the treatment of a US investment that formed part of a Dublin man’s estate, which had an overall value of more than €800,000.
Patrick Joseph Quinn, of the Pines, Herbert Park Lane, Ballsbridge, died aged 97 in May 2024 and left no surviving child, parent or sibling. The beneficiaries named in various wills created by him included many of his 20 nieces and nephews and some charities.
Originally from Inchicore, Quinn, who had served with the US merchant marine, featured on the Virgin Media show OAP B&B in 2020. Then aged 92, Quinn welcomed a 25-year-old native of Kildare, then working for a homeless shelter in Dublin, to live in his home for two weeks.
In a recently published High Court judgment, Judge Siobhán Stack noted that Quinn lived for many years in the US, where he married and later divorced, before returning to Ireland in 1986.
He made at least six wills in his lifetime, the earliest of which was in California in 2013, with five subsequent wills made in Ireland on dates between 2017 and 2024.
His nephew Paul Quinn and niece Carmel Cullen, the executor of her uncle’s five Irish wills, applied to the court to decide issues relating to the treatment of the US investment forming part of his estate.
The judge said the deceased died leaving a substantial Irish estate, with a net value of almost €805,000, but also leaving a US investment comprising shares registered in the UK and valued at almost $53,000 at the date of his death.
The question for the Irish court in this application concerned which, if any, of the deceased’s wills governed the testamentary succession to the US investment and which will, or wills, should be admitted to probate here. The probate office had raised queries in that regard, the judge noted.
A revocation clause in the February 2024 will, his last will, was “somewhat ambiguous” because it purported to revoke all wills, not only those dealing with the estate in the Republic of Ireland but also the estate to which the Republic’s laws apply.
As Quinn was domiciled here at the date of his death, his US investment, consisting of movable property, is property to which Irish law applies, she said.
She was satisfied that, from 2021 onwards, Quinn believed he would have disposed of his foreign assets before he died and believed none of his later wills would apply to any of his assets situated abroad.
The judge held the February 2024 will was not intended to revoke any earlier will dealing with Quinn’s foreign estate and the 2019 will had not been revoked as far as the US investment was concerned.
As a result, that investment is to be distributed in line with the 2019 will, meaning it will be divided in shares of different proportions between 12 of Quinn’s nieces and nephews, a grandnephew, and four charities, including the Society of St Vincent de Paul.
Had the 2024 will applied instead, the society would have got a larger share but it had taken a neutral stance on this application as had some family members who stood to lose or gain depending on the court’s decision, the judge noted.
In due course, the 2019 will would have to be admitted to probate in the relevant foreign jurisdiction, probably England and Wales, she added.