A woman is suing after she was left £250 in her father’s £600,000 will, with her sister receiving almost everything else.
Laxmikant Patel’s will handed the £600,000 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 £250 each.
Anju Patel told a court hearing that their father explained his decision by saying he had come to “mistrust” Mrs Stewart-Brown and that she and her brother had “failed in their sense of duty” as his children.
He then left them the tiny cash gifts, saying: “As a father, I have not forgotten them”.
Mrs Stewart-Brown is now challenging the will in court, claiming her father did not “know and approve” its contents, pointing out that the “odd” will was written in English, a language she claims he couldn’t read properly.
She is seeking to uphold an earlier will, splitting the £600,000 estate almost equally between the three siblings, but Anju Patel is fighting back, insisting her father had every reason to all but disinherit the others.
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
At the High Court, it was heard that Piyush Patel was a “hugely controlling figure” who had declined to scatter his mother’s ashes in India.
It was also also claimed that Mrs Stewart-Brown – an inspector with the Care Quality Commission – had “a bad temper” and took “massive advantage” of her father when he was alive.
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.
In his previous will of October 2019 he had split his estate equally, except for an extra £50,000 bequest to Anju Patel to balance out similar amounts he had previously handed to his other two children.
But Timothy Sherwin, Mrs Stewart-Brown’s barrister, highlighted the allegedly “odd” circumstances in which Laxmikant Patel made his last August 2021 will, soon after he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
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’s and came to visit him in his bed at the Northwick Park Hospital.
Vijaykant Patel was not a qualified lawyer, said Mr Sherwin, who added: “But there is much more to excite the court’s suspicion – the purported execution of the 2021 will took place shortly after the deceased was admitted to hospital for lethargy, dizziness and coughing up blood.
“That will was in English, a language he could not properly read.”
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.
But Anju’s 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 “taken massive advantage” of him.
“Although he did not act on this view immediately, after his diagnosis with cancer in August 2021, he decided to act,” he said.
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.
The trial continues.