Famous Cases

Sherrington v Sherrington

The name of a court case, Sherrington v Sherrington also describes the battlefield that was the marriage of Richard Sherrington (1945-2001) and his second wife Yvonne.

When Richard and Yvonne tied the knot in 1999, wills that either of them had previously made automatically became invalid. As a solicitor, Richard certainly knew this legal fact of life, although he did not make a new will - either one before marriage that contemplated his forthcoming nuptials, or one made shortly after the ceremony.

He finally composed a new will two years later, with the draft delivered to him shortly before he and Yvonne were to fly to France for a short break. Richard took possession of the draft in circumstances more harried than relaxed.

The will was riddled with errors, betraying its amateurish as well as harried origins. But it also had the requisite witness signatures and had been signed, after all, by a solicitor.

But what about its numerous errors? And did Richard really mean to exclude his children, to whom he was deeply attached?

Who's Who

The Sherringtons number six in all.

Richard, the solicitor, ran his own legal practice and later acquired a second law firm. He also founded a loan business to which he devoted most of his time. He did little legal work himself.

Sherrington had three children - Daliah, Donna and Ramon - with his first wife Gloria. Two plus three equals five. In 1999, Richard divorced Gloria and married Yvonne, who became the sixth Sherrington.

Yvonne had a daughter, Nathalie, from her previous marriage. Nathalie received a Ph.D. in plant ecology but instead of working in a related field, she accepted a position in her step-father's law firm.

Also in the cast are two minor but important players - the two witnesses to the will, Mrs Butt and Mr Thakkar. Mrs Butt was an assistant teacher and the wife of Rafiq Butt, Richard's friend cum adviser cum chauffeur.

Pranlal Thakkar worked for Sherrington as a cleaner; his native language was Gujarati and his English was limited.

Going to court

Richard and Yvonne survived their trip to France, but some time afterward, Richard, driving alone, was killed in a car crash on 30 October 2001. He was 56 and had been married to Yvonne for two and a quarter years.

When probate was granted, his estate was valued at £2.8m. His total assets were approximately £10m, nearly four times the probate value, according to court documents.

Probate of Sherrington's will was granted to Yvonne on 10 May 2002.

Nearly a full year later, on 2 May 2003, first wife Gloria and Sherrington's son Ramon, issued proceedings under the 1975 Act. They were too late. Such proceedings should have been brought within six months of the grant of probate.

In addition to legal manoeuvres regarding the 1975 Act, Richard's children sued to have their father's will declared invalid. If successful, Richard would have died intestate, and they would automatically become beneficiaries by intestacy.

The judge and his judgement

The first case was heard in the High Court before a judge who described Richard as a larger than life figure with a 'booming voice and a forceful personality. He had a strong character and generally got his own way.'

But second wife Yvonne was no pushover: on the witness stand, she was "aggressive, intolerant, ready without any basis to charge anyone who gave evidence adverse to her cause with deliberately lying,' in the eyes of the judge.

Yvonne testified that, although she and her husband quarreled, their relationship was basically loving. The judge summed up the marriage as 'volatile and tempestuous. There were vehement rows and storms.'

Some of the rows derived from Yvonne's upset at Richard for regularly visiting his children and first wife. "He regularly visited her, ate her chicken soup and gave her presents until his death," the judge noted.

His first wife gave him soul food, his second wife gave him grief. Friends and relatives testified that Sherrington was unhappy with his new wife, using terms such as 'Hitler' and ' witch'. He would take holidays accompanied only by his son, a stratagem for getting away from his wife. He regarded his second marriage as the 'biggest mistake' of his life.

Panic stations at will-signing time

An unhappy or turbulent marriage does not in and of itself revoke a will.

Richard and Yvonne had agreed to make reciprocal wills in which each of them left his or her entire estate to the other. Richard signed his will on 7 September 2001, hours before flying to France with Yvonne.

The author of his will, his step-daughter Nathalie, had recently earned a doctorate degree in botany. Newspaper accounts of the Sherrington case emphasised her science background, as if she rushed from her botany laboratory and, still in white lab coat and with no legal training at all, composed her step-father's sophisticated will.

Actually, she had a smattering of legal training. After earning her degree, Nathalie, along with her mother, joined the family law firm. Nathalie's primary responsibilities were maintaining a data base and obtaining preliminary instructions from clients. By the time she wrote Richard's will, she had been working at the firm for only two months.

Nathalie delivered the will to him at 6.30 p.m. in his office in north London. Richard and Yvonne had to catch a 9 p.m. flight at Luton, north of London. Richard had less than three hours to approve and attest his will and travel to the airport. In those days - before the terror attacks on 11 September 2001 in America - it was possible to arrive fairly close to departure time. Nevertheless, time was tight.

Was Richard the type who was cool under that kind of time pressure? The judge thought not, declaring that "Anxiety about catching planes created a sense of panic in the Deceased."

What happened next...and according to whom?

Richard apparently succeeded both in signing his will and getting to the airport on time. But did he really know what he was signing, and was it witnessed correctly?

Anecdotes about chicken soup and domestic turbulence are highly entertaining, but the judge zeroed in on the two issues that really mattered: proper execution of the will, and whether Richard knew and approved its contents. The period of time when the will was signed and witnessed - a period of some five minutes - was key to the entire case. And each side had a different version of what occurred during those crucial minutes.

If Richard had carefully read the will and signed it in the presence of the two witnesses who, then, signed it in front of him, there would have been no case to answer.

On this specific question, the judge analysed evidence from Yvonne and the two witnesses and, weighing varying accounts, concluded that Richard signed the will unobserved by either of the two witnesses. The will was not validly executed.

He then considered if Richard knew the substance of his own will?

The judge believed that, although Richard signed each of the will's three pages, he had not actually read it or was aware of its contents. Furthermore, on 6 September, the day before their holiday to France, Richard and Yvonne had agreed to make wills but not that they had agreed to make reciprocal wills, let alone a document for Richard that totally excluded his children.

The dire state of the Sherrington marriage was one factor that weighed heavily on the judge.

He was also not convinced by Yvonne or her daughter. The judge concluded that Yvonne was " an unsatisfactory and unreliable witness.
She refused to answer questions directly. She fenced. She constantly interrupted counsel's questions."

Nathalie was much the same: "Dr Walker began as a composed and helpful witness but as soon as she was questioned about the drafting of the Wills, became unnerved, uncomfortable and agitated. The cross-examination revealed that she had good reasons for her anxiety, for her evidence when tested lacked credibility."

The High Court found for the children. But the Court of Appeal awaited, and their conclusion contained some surprises.

The three appellate judges went back to basics: A signed and witnessed will that looks, waddles and quacks like the real thing is the real thing, unless the "strongest evidence" suggests otherwise. Such evidence was lacking - the Appeals judged disagreed with the High Court judge on the weight of the evidence provided by one of the will's witnesses - and it had to be assumed that Sherrington knew what he was signing. He was a solicitor with some 30 years' experience, and his will was actually "short and simple." He knew what his will contained, and he approved of those contents.

Neat, cogent, unambiguous. The Appeals Court pronounced. But the three judges also expressed some unhappiness with this outcome. Legally, they felt they had no choice, but emotionally, they thought that intestacy - the outcome they were overturning - would have been fairer. Under intestacy, the children and Yvonne would have shared the estate, and on her death, her share would pass to them. Richard and Yvonne had promised to provide for one another's children if one of them died, and the judges urged Yvonne to do precisely that.

In addition to the two main hearings, the Sherringtons also jousted in complicated cases involving costs. In one such hearing, the Court expressed this poignant wish: "We can only say that the parties should be warned that continued litigation will further erode the substance of what Richard has left behind him. It is time to end this litigation, not with victory or defeat, but with agreement."