Re-marriage

Re-marriage and stepchildren: disaster in the making?

The Beatles sang of money not buying love, but Mick Jagger certainly got some satisfaction with the view from his pricey London home overlooking the River Thames on Richmond Hill. The will of Richard Cox-Johnson, a merchant banker whose clients included Jagger and the Rolling Stones, caused major friction between his children and their step-mother.

Plenty of people remarry and live happily ever after with step-children in large blended families. And many don't. Adult children from an earlier marriage and a step-parent in the newer relationship can be a recipe for disaster. In life as in many fairy-tales, step-mothers are the embodiment of evil. It ain't necessarily so.

Case Studies Stepmothers and Missteps

1: Victory to the Step-Children

Richard Sprackling willed his ‘farm’ to his wife, and after he died, she took him at his word and took the farm - all of the buildings, paddocks, lake, organic farm and other land and businesses. His three adult children by his first wife - who worked with him on the farm and its various businesses - got nothing.

The children argued in court that 'farm' meant only the 'farmhouse' and surrounding property, not all of the land and businesses. They lost.

‘Farm’ versus ‘farmhouse’. Were the children merely playing with words or did they have a substantive point - and would the Appeals Court have enough evidence to make a determination?

In fact, there was evidence in abundance. Language usage was indeed critical, but equally fascinating was the behind-the-scenes thoughts and actions of many of the participants. Full story.

2: Victory to the Step-Mother

A merchant banker whose clients included Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, Richard Cox-Johnson (1934-2005) made a new will in 2005 that increased the amount he was leaving to his wife. This new will divided his estate of approximately £10 million into four roughly equal shares - one share each for his three sons from his first wife, and one share for his second wife, their step-mother.

Cox-Johnson's sons assured their father that they were happy with his new financial arrangement, but after he died they contested the will, claiming that he had lacked testamentary capacity.

According to newspaper reports, emails between the brothers indicated that they had planned to challenge the will all along. They reportedly filmed their father secretly at a luncheon party, intending to use the footage to demonstrate his confused mental state.

Cox-Johnson had heart trouble and Parkinson's disease but was mentally alert. Six days into court testimony, the sons threw in the towel and withdrew their legal challenge.

" . . . "

"It was very well known that no affection was ever supposed to exist between the children of any man by different marriages; and why was he to ruin himself, and their poor little Harry, by giving away all his money to his half sisters?'

Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1811)