Gary Pammen, who performs as “The Cockney Bard” and claims powers of healing and second sight, had sued his sister Tracy Pammen and her daughter Paige Pammen. The psychic poet, who says his verses are telepathically channelled by spirits, has featured on BBC, Sky and ITV.<\/p>\n
The dispute stemmed from the death of their father, Terrance Pammen, who passed away aged 83 in May 2022. <\/p>\n
Mr Pammen senior had left his entire \u00a3451,840 estate \u2013 primarily a house in Stratford, east London \u2013 to Tracy and Paige, despite having five children.<\/p>\n
Gary Pammen challenged the 2016 will, arguing his father lacked “testamentary capacity” and did not “know and approve” its contents due to mental frailty. <\/p>\n
However, Judge Simon Monty has now upheld the will, ruling in favour of Tracy and Paige, and ordered the TV clairvoyant to pay the legal costs.<\/p>\n
“This entire claim is based upon no more than suspicion borne out of a family disagreement with Tracy…around about the time of his mother\u2019s death,” the judge said.<\/p>\n
“This has led Gary to see every piece of evidence as supportive of his case, whereas in fact his belief \u2013 which no doubt he strongly and genuinely holds \u2013 is based on no more than confirmation bias.<\/p>\n
“Gary is simply unable to accept that his father did not leave him, his sister Jackie or his brother Mark anything.”<\/p>\n
![\"Terrance](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/TracyPaige-Pammen(2).jpeg\")
Terrance left the house and all his remaining cash to daughter Tracy and granddaughter Paige (Champion News)<\/p>\n
The Plaistow-born poet, representing himself against his sister and niece during the trial of the case, told Central London County Court that the 2016 will had \u201ccompletely disinherited\u201d Terrance\u2019s children and grandchildren, apart from Tracy and Paige, beyond the gift of \u201ca few worthless chattels\u201d.<\/p>\n
Excluded from everything of monetary value in the will alongside Gary were his other siblings, Mark, Jacqueline and Gemma. None were parties in the litigation.<\/p>\n
Gary, 65, who now lives in Norfolk, says he spoke to his dad every day by phone, adding outside court that he loved his father and always got on with him, and that there was no clear reason for him to be disinherited.<\/p>\n
In his claim to the court, he said that Terrance lacked a sound mind when the will was signed, alleging that it was drawn up \u201cwhen the deceased was suffering from documented cognitive and progressive impairment, alongside profound confusion regarding his family relations and the extent of his estate\u201d.<\/p>\n
He also accused Tracy of raiding their dad\u2019s bank accounts in his final years, an allegation which she and her lawyers dismissed as nonsense.<\/p>\n
Defending the will, Tracy and Paige said Terrance was \u201ctotally sharp\u201d and independent-minded when he drew up the will and had firm views about how he wanted to leave his estate.<\/p>\n
Tracy pointed out that her father was still working sorting out shopping trolleys at Morrisons when he made his will, and carried on doing so for up to three years afterwards.<\/p>\n
Her barrister, Tom Gosling, said there were \u201cno real doubts\u201d about Terrance\u2019s ability to grasp what he was doing when he initiated the will-drafting process in 2016 with no involvement from any family member, with expert evidence from a psychiatrist confirming he was of sound mind.<\/p>\n
Terrance was ultimately diagnosed with dementia in 2020, but he had displayed no signs of a failing memory until 2017 or 2018, said Mr Gosling.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t agree that he had confusion,\u201d Tracy told the court, adding that she had gone round to visit him daily for stints of up to three hours and took him on shopping and social trips.<\/p>\n
![\"Terrance](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/TerrancePammen.jpeg\")
Terrance Pammen died aged 83 in May 2022, leaving an estate valued at \u00a3451,840 (Supplied by Champion News)<\/p>\n
Questioned by Gary about why Terrance would have cut out four of his children as well as a vulnerable grandson, Paige replied: \u201cHe knew that he would be cared for by us; that\u2019s why he left all this to me and my mother because he knew we would be responsible for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finding in favour of Tracy and Paige, the judge said: “It is in my view crystal clear from all of this \u2013 on a holistic evaluation of all the factual and expert evidence…that Mr Pammen had testamentary capacity.<\/p>\n
“I regret to say that Gary\u2019s case to the contrary, and this entire claim, is based upon no more than suspicion borne out of a family disagreement with Tracy – the details of which I have not been told – around about the time of his mother\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
“This has led Gary to see every piece of evidence as supportive of his case, whereas in fact his belief \u2013 which no doubt he strongly and genuinely holds \u2013 is based on no more than confirmation bias, a willingness to see everything as supportive, rather than objective facts and what is more likely to have been the case.<\/p>\n
“Gary is simply unable to accept that his father did not leave him, his sister Jackie or his brother Mark anything, and he now sees everything as confirming that his father did not understand what was going on.<\/p>\n
“In fact, the evidence is to the contrary, and is that Mr Pammen\u2019s cognitive problems did not cause any issues until at least a year after the will.<\/p>\n
“Part of Gary\u2019s complaint against Tracy and Paige is that there are large unexplained withdrawals from Mr Pammen\u2019s account, particularly after a time when on the medical evidence there had been a dementia diagnosis. Gary said that they had fleeced his late father of tens of thousands of pounds.<\/p>\n
“I have decided that I should make no express finding on this other than that the money was not withdrawn by Tracy and\/or Paige.<\/p>\n
“All I need to say is that I am not persuaded that the withdrawals were made by Tracy, save where Tracy accepted having made some more modest withdrawals for groceries for Mr Pammen.”<\/p>\n
Going on to direct Gary to pay his sister and niece’s court costs of \u00a3216,013.85, with a \u00a3150,000 up front payment, the judge concluded: “I can see no good reason for not ordering that Gary should make a payment on account. It seems to me that a payment on account of \u00a3150,000 is reasonable in the circumstances and I will so order.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-666540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}