ill v RSPCA
All this will be yours some day
After John Gill died in 1999, his wife Joyce became sole owner of the family's large and prosperous Potto Carr Farm until she died in 2006.
After her death, the terms of Joyce's will became known for the first time. Mirroring her late husband's will, Joyce left everything to the RSPCA - and nothing to their daughter and only child, Christine, her , or to Andrew or Christopher, Christine's husband and son. Christopher was Joyce's only grandchild.
A former university lecturer, Christine Gill was doubly surprised by her mother's will. She expected to inherit the valuable 287-acre family farm, and she did not expect to see that a beneficiary, let alone the beneficiary, would be the RSPCA, an organisation her mother had belittled. She certainly had no expectation that she would be totally disinherited.
Christine sued and was victorious in the High Court. The RSPCA appealed, and the Appeals Court again found for Christine, although for different reasons.
John and Joyce Gill owned Potto Carr Farm, near Northallerton, Yorkshire. Their daughter Christine earned a PhD and became a lecturer at Leeds University.
Her parents needed help on the farm, however, and Christine and her husband bought and refurbished a derelict farmhouse adjacent to her parents' farm. She continued to teach part-time, but she effectively abandoned her academic career to work on the farm.
At one point after her father died, Christine asked her mother about her will, and her mother told her that she and her husband had left the farm to one another. Her mother said nothing at all about the RSPCA.
Mirror, mirror on the wall
The Gills executed their wills in 1993, when John was in his mid-70s and Joyce was about 70. John died six years later, aged 82. Joyce died in 2006, also aged 82. During the seven years between her husband's death and her own, she did not change her will.
4. I GIVE DEVISE AND BEQUEATH all my estate...and shall hold the residue UPON TRUST for the RSPCA of the Causeway Horsham West Sussex RH12 1HG absolutely AND I DIRECT that the receipt of the Treasurer for the time being of the RSPCA shall be a sufficient discharge to my trustees….
5. I DECLARE that no provision is hereby made for my daughter Christine Angela Baczkowski because I feel she has been well provided for by me over a long period of time….
Motiveless malignity
Did John and Joyce Gill truly "provide well" and "over a long period of time" for their daughter, or believe they had done so?
If she was not in fact well provided for, why did they disinherit her, and why did they give everything to a charity toward which they had, if anything, negative feelings?
Did husband and wife discuss the terms of their essentially identical wills in a calm, deliberate, rational manner - both about their daughter and about the RSPCA?
Was the farm promised to their daughter, either explicitly or tacitly?
"Although Mrs Gill was not a lawyer, if she was conscious that by her own will the Farm had been left to the RSPCA, she would have realised that saying what she did say to her daughter was misleading, because of her silence about the gift to the RSPCA. The fact that Mrs Gill did not mention that gift seems consistent with her not having appreciated that she had left the Farm to the RSPCA, rather than with her either having forgotten it or intentionally misleading Dr Gill (although, while unlikely, both of those are possibilities)."
Appeals Court
www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2010/1430.html
What were the circumstances in which the wills were drafted, discussed and approved?
Was either parent tempted to alter the wills after their grandson was born? John in particular supposedly longed for a grandchild.
Some of these questions were satisfactorily answered. For example, Christine's parents provided much of the purchase price of the farmhouse Christine and her husband bought, but overall the parents' financial assistance was modest.
The High Court and the Appeals Court analysed Joyce Gill's will, but questions concerning the disinheriting of their daughter and leaving everything to a charity will never be definitively answered. The only people capable of providing reasons and motivations - John and Joyce Gill - can no longer do so.
Trident
In support of her claim to be the sole beneficiary of her mother's will, Christine fielded three strikers:
Her mother, Joyce, did not know or approve the terms of her will.
If she did know and approve the terms, then she had been unduly influenced by her husband.
Christine was nonetheless still entitled to the farm on the basis of 'proprietary estoppel' - essentially, the farm had been promised to her.
The first hearing was held in the High Court in Leeds in November 2008, with the verdict delivered a year later, in October 2009. More than twenty witnesses were called, including two medical experts, during the 15-day hearing.
The character of the husband - and the mental state of the wife - dominated the evidence.
John was a ‘bully’ and a ‘domineering and ‘determined’ man with an ‘explosive' temper and character.
Joyce was submissive, an obsessive compulsive, given to panic attacks, agoraphobia and extreme anxiety. When Joyce visited her daughter, she would wear rubber gloves and bring her own cup and saucer. When visitors arrived at the farm, she would hide in a car covered by a tarpaulin.
Over time, her nervousness intensified and she would no longer go shopping or attend social events. Being alone in her house distressed her, so she accompanied John to work - he would work, and she would sit in the car while he worked.
Joyce attended her daughter's two degree ceremonies but attendance meant only that she was driven to the venue. Once there, she remained in the car.
The High Court judge found that “Mrs Gill’s fear of the risk of Mr Gill losing his temper and of him withdrawing his crucial support for Mrs Gill, combined with her timid and shy personality, her traditional deferment to him and the severe anxiety consequent upon the agoraphobia from which she suffered, unduly influenced her to make the will she did.”
The will was declared invalid. Christine inherited her mother's estate according to the rules of intestacy.
The invisible woman
The judge in the first case focused on the personalities of both parents, mostly concerning John's control over Joyce.
The Appeals Court also focused on personalities, but took a different tack in concentrating less on John's control over Joyce than on Joyce's control over herself. Was she capable of actually attending meetings with her solicitor and, if so, how much information was she able to process while there? Was she emotionally capable of helping draft her will and read and approve the final version? The Appeals judges emphasised the consequences of Joyce's mental state as it affected her ability to know and approve the contents of her will.
The case reached the High Court 15 years after the Gills made their wills, by which time their solicitor was unable to recall acting for them. He said, however, that his usual practice was to read aloud their wills to his clients and, when approved, execute them in his office. He also would have posted a draft copy to his clients.
The Appeals judges wondered if the solicitor sent the draft wills in one envelope or separately, one copy to John, one to Joyce. She might not have even seen the draft.
Joyce definitely visited her solicitor's office at least once, on 27 April 1993. There might have been an earlier meeting, which Joyce might or might not have attended.
At the 27 April meeting during which the wills were executed, when the solicitor read the will aloud, did he recite it straight through and take questions afterward, or did he pause after each clause? A straight-through reading would have been harder to comprehend.
They wondered how much information Joyce took in - assuming she was actually present. She might have been driven to the solicitor's office but remained in the car, as was her wont.
In a sense, however, whether or not she was actually present was irrelevant. Her extreme anxiety prevented Joyce from fully and properly participating in the making of, and understanding, her will.
