{"id":458213,"date":"2026-05-20T10:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/458213\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T10:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:41:08","slug":"judge-refuses-to-reconstitute-will-linked-to-e1-5m-estate-after-it-was-lost-when-solicitors-office-burgled-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/458213\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge refuses to reconstitute will linked to \u20ac1.5m estate after it was lost when solicitors office burgled \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A judge has refused to reconstitute the will of a Co Limerick<\/a> man, whose estate is valued at about \u20ac1.5 million, after the document was lost more than a decade ago when a solicitors\u2019 office was burgled.<\/p>\n

High Court<\/a> judge Siobh\u00e1n Stack said she had no information about the contents of the wills of Paul Real and his wife, Phyllis, which were lost in the 2012 burglary. <\/p>\n

She said it was \u201cregrettable\u201d that the deceased had not taken up the solicitor\u2019s invitation to make a fresh will prior to his death. Paul Real, with an address at Ennis Road, Limerick, died in a care facility on February 20th, 2025. <\/p>\n

The judge on Monday said it seemed that Phyllis Real, who is in her 80s, lacks capacity and is in a nursing home, would be entitled to the bulk of his estate.<\/p>\n

Earlier, she heard David and Mark Real were named as their father\u2019s executors when he made his will in 1988. That will, and one by his wife, were lost during the burglary.<\/p>\n

She was told his sons, in applying to have his will reconstituted, were relying on the register of wills and also referred to a conversation in 2023 with Paul Real about his wishes. The judge said the register contained no information about the contents of a will and she could not grant the application without knowing what the will said. <\/p>\n

There were lots of opinions about what wills might have said but such opinions were not admissible evidence, she said.<\/p>\n

David and Mark Real were probably in their early 20s, at most, when they were appointed executors of their father\u2019s estate in 1988 and the presumption was that Paul Real had in his will left everything to his spouse, she said.<\/p>\n

Counsel for the executors said their application was being made with the aim of gathering in the deceased\u2019s estate and to have it administered principally for the benefit of his wife. <\/p>\n

The judge was told the estate is worth about \u20ac1.5 million, including a house valued about \u20ac500,000 and about \u20ac1 million in accounts mostly jointly owned by the deceased and his wife.<\/p>\n

The deceased had seemed to believe he would survive his wife but that is generally not the situation, as was the case here, she said.<\/p>\n

The judge made orders granting liberty to David and Mark Real, as executors, to apply for and be granted letters of administration of the estate of their father. <\/p>\n

It seemed the deceased\u2019s wife will end up with about two-thirds of the estate but it is possible there may be other applications \u201cdown the line\u201d if something comes to light, she said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A judge has refused to reconstitute the will of a Co Limerick man, whose estate is valued at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,79807,61,60],"class_list":["post-458213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-four-courts-building-2","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}