A judge has cleared the way for the sale of a deceased farmer’s former home to go towards paying some of the estimated €1.5 million legal costs of a lengthy battle over his estate.
The former home of Michael Hoare in Birr, Co Offaly, valued about €450,000, is the last remaining asset in his estate, High Court judge David Nolan said. Its sale will still leave a “massive shortfall” with those owed costs “lucky to get 20 per cent of what is due”.
Hoare died aged 82 in 2007 and his estate was subject of a lengthy legal dispute between his son William Naylor and daughter Jean Maher.
Naylor, who lived and worked on Hoare’s farm at Derrylahan, Roscrea, Co Tipperary, for more than 30 years, learned only after Hoare’s death that the farmer was his biological father. Hoare had married Naylor’s mother in the 1980s and Naylor had always believed another man, his mother’s first husband, was his father.
[ Court upholds ruling that man is entitled to farm of biological fatherOpens in new window ]
The most recent case was between Maher and Myles Gilvarry, a solicitor who was appointed administrator of the estate after the High Court removed Maher as executrix in 2019.
Maher appealed to the High Court against a Circuit Court order made last October, with a nine-month stay, for possession of her father’s former home. Gilvarry wanted possession to sell the property to go towards discharging legal costs incurred as administrator.
In his recently published judgment dismissing the appeal, Nolan noted this was the fifth judgment in 14 years relating to the Hoare estate. The dispute followed “a similar path” to the fictional probate dispute in Charles Dickens’s novel Bleak House in that it became so protracted the estate was “ultimately consumed by legal costs”, he said.
The Birr property, he said, was left to Maher by her late father and she lived there for some years after his death, having given her own home to her son.
Maher argued she owned the house, had made substantial improvements to it and alleged she was previously given assurances by Gilvarry when he acted for her while she was executrix that no application for possession would be brought.
He dismissed the appeal for reasons including he was satisfied Maher did not own the property, that any assurances given by Gilvarry to Maher were not in the context of his later appointment as administrator and any improvements to the property did not give her an interest in it.
Following an earlier 21-day High Court case, Judge Daniel O’Keeffe had ruled in 2012 that Naylor was entitled to Hoare’s 49-hectare (120-acre) farm.
Naylor had sued Maher seeking to set aside a 2006 will of his father’s in which Hoare left Naylor €150,000 and left Maher, who cared for Hoare in his later years, the farm. The 2006 will replaced one made a year earlier in which Hoare left the farm to Naylor.
In finding Naylor was entitled to the farm, O’Keeffe said Naylor had worked it for “minimal remuneration” and Hoare had promised him many times he would leave it to him. He dismissed other claims by Naylor that the 2006 will had been procured by duress and undue influence by Maher.
On appeal by Maher, the Court of Appeal ruled Naylor was entitled to the land based on the promises made to him and 75 per cent of his legal costs but disagreed he was also entitled to a bequest of €150,000.
A later 2024 High Court decision, on proceedings by Gilvarry against Naylor, concerned what priority should be given to legal costs in probate litigation when an estate becomes insolvent. Judge Oisín Quinn noted the estimated €1.5 million legal costs awarded to both the executor/administrator and Naylor were well in excess of the €450,000 value of Hoare’s estate. The judge held the executor/administrator’s costs, estimated at about €1 million, were prioritised over those of other litigants, such as Naylor, where the estate was insolvent.