- Two stepchildren of Dr Jack Leonard will not get their share of his inheritance
- Judge found that his rewritten will from 2015 was invalid as he had dementia
The children of a multi-millionaire inventor have won a High Court battle with their step-siblings after demanding they were cut from his £5.4million fortune because he was suffering with dementia when he split his inheritance between his two families.
The four children of Dr Jack Leonard – a genius engineer who developed an early foetal heart rate monitor before later becoming a business tycoon and training as a helicopter pilot – claimed the will was invalid because he lacked mental ‘capacity’ when it was rewritten in 2015, and a judge has now ruled in their favour.
He was married twice, having four children with first wife Audrey Leonard and later treating ‘as his own’ the children of his second wife Margaret Leonard, who he controversially met through an online dating site and flew to meet in his chopper on their first date.
When he died, aged 87, in 2019, he split his fortune between his stepchildren and his own children, with each getting a share as ultimate beneficiaries.
But the two families went to war over Dr Leonard’s final 2015 will, with his children Megan, Sara, Jonathan and Andrew Leonard fighting for their step-siblings to be cut out.
Dr Leonard’s stepchildren – glazing company boss Mark Smith, 66, and yoga teacher Elizabeth Leslie, 57, said they were included in the will, along with the children of their dead sister Melanie – in a change from Dr Leonard’s previous 2007 will – because of the close bonds they formed with him after he married their mother.
But this week at the High Court Mrs Justice Joanna Smith handed victory to Dr Leonard’s own children, leaving his stepchildren with nothing from his will.
She found that the multimillionaire pensioner, who suffered from dementia in the years leading up to his death, no longer had the mental ‘capacity’ to understand all of the contents of his 2015 will by the time he made it.
The court heard Jack Leonard was a talented engineer, who co-founded Eurotherm International, a Worthing-based business which became a world leader in the supply of temperature control devices to industry.
The Manchester-born engineer began his career in Edinburgh, where he developed a foetal heart monitor, before going on to found Eurotherm with colleagues in 1965.
The business was a huge success, turning over £1m by 1970, when Dr Leonard temporarily moved his young family to Virginia, in the US, to take the company global.
Outside of his business life, Dr Leonard was passionate about aviation, trained as a helicopter pilot and set up Fast Helicopters, a flying school and tour company in Worthing.
He married first wife Audrey in 1958 after meeting at Manchester University and they had their children Sara, 60, former pub manager Megan, 54, and US-based Andrew and Jonathan.
Audrey died in 1998 and, the court heard, Dr Leonard very soon afterwards started using an internet dating service, something which Megan told the court was a ‘concern’ for the family.
He met Margaret through the dating service and their first meeting was on her 62nd birthday at Southend Airport, said his stepchildren’s’ barrister, Thomas Dumont KC.
‘Jack flew in on his helicopter, wearing his pilot’s epaulettes,’ he told the judge. ‘Jack swept Margaret off her feet. They were married a year later. Margaret adored Jack, and he was devoted to her.’
They lived together in West Sussex and latterly a £1.1million house in Hutton Place, Brentwood, Essex.
They enjoyed a ‘very good standard of living,’ travelling the world together and even flying for meals at hotels around the country in his helicopter.
Mr Dumont said Dr Leonard had an ‘extraordinary close, loving and devoted relationship’ with Margaret and her family.
With Margaret’s grandchildren, he stepped into the ‘role of grandfather in all but name, attending sports days, school plays, and taking an active interest in their academic lives and hobbies,’ he said.
But he continued: ‘Jack’s relationship with his own children, and indeed Margaret’s relationship with them, was different. This in part is no doubt due to the fact that Jonathan and Andrew lived in the US, Megan lived in Bolton and Sara in Teddington, some distance from Jack and Margaret’s home initially in West Sussex, but subsequently in Essex.’
Sara, Megan and Andrew had not spoken to Margaret during Dr Leonard’s funeral and wake, and she had not been mentioned in Sara’s eulogy, the barrister said.
The court heard Dr Leonard had made a will in 2007, leaving his share of their home to Margaret, with most of the rest split roughly five ways between Margaret and his own children.
However, he then made the disputed October 2015 will, which left the Brentwood house to Margaret and the rest of his estate on trust for her for life.
It would only be on her death that his children would get their inheritance, but they would also have to share it seven ways with their step-siblings Mark and Elizabeth, with Dr Leonard’s deceased stepdaughter Melanie’s children getting her share.
The decision sparked a High Court battle in London, with his four children trying to have the will overturned, claiming he did not have capacity to make it when he did.
Their barrister, Constance McDonnell KC, said there were ‘obvious alarm bells’ as to whether the ailing inventor had capacity to understand what he was doing in 2015.
He had dementia and had suffered a suspected stroke, while the will had been prepared not by a trained solicitor but a tax advisor, without the usual precautions to make sure he was mentally fit.
‘Jack’s cognitive difficulties would have been less apparent to an untrained observer and, to an extent, he was able to maintain a social facade, particularly in certain social/family settings,’ she said.
She said Jack had a ‘consistent and longstanding wish’ that most of his wealth would ultimately pass to his own four children, which was shown by his making of the 2007 will eight years into his marriage to Margaret.
‘At no time did Jack suggest to anyone that he felt any moral duty to provide in his will for any of Margaret’s children or grandchildren,’ she continued.
There was also no evidence of the will being explained to Dr Leonard in the months leading up to its signing and he ‘could not have understood it merely by reading it to himself.’
‘There is no evidence that he did in fact read it,’ she added.
For Dr Leonard’s step-family, Mr Dumont said there was good reason why he would have wanted to benefit Margaret’s children alongside his own.
‘He had become an intimate member of Margaret’s family,’ he said.
‘He had ‘done life’ with them, sharing in the family’s celebrations and in their moments of grief. He was grandfather in all but name to her grandchildren, and a great-grandfather to her great-grandchildren.
‘Nothing could be more natural than Jack wanting to provide first and foremost for Margaret. Nor should it be in the slightest bit surprising that, given his close relationship with Margaret’s family, he should have decided to include them as significant beneficiaries of his estate.’
Ruling, Mrs Justice Joanna Smith found that Dr Leonard did not have ‘testamentary capacity’ at the time he made the will and could not have understood all of the provisions of the ‘detailed and complex’ document.
Dr Leonard had dementia at the time, she said, and although he had wanted a ‘simple will’ he ended up with something much more complex which he could not have truly understood.
‘Jack was suffering from dementia, probably due to a combination of vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease, at the time he made the 2015 will,’ she said.
‘The medical evidence and my factual findings are consistent with Jack having been suffering from dementia for a number of years by the time he signed the 2015 will.’
She said the evidence showed that, due to his illness, Jack had ‘lacked the mental flexibility to understand and apply rational thought to the exercise of finalising his will.’
‘It is common ground that Jack had no assistance as at the time of signing the 2015 will in understanding its content and, even had he been taken through the draft on 28 October 2015, I consider, on balance, that he would not have been able to understand the complexities of its provisions,’ she said.
‘I consider that, on balance, as at the 28 October 2015, Jack was not able to comprehend the nature and effect of the 2015 will, which was a complex and detailed document; and Jack had lost the ability to make a rational decision in connection with complex subject matter of the type set out in the 2015 will.’
The ruling means Dr Leonard’s estate will be split five ways between Margaret and his four children, with his stepchildren getting nothing from his will, although they will inherit what their mother has when she dies.
‘I wish to make it clear that I know how difficult this judgment will be for Margaret’s family, who saw far more of Jack in the final years of his life, took on many of the caring responsibilities and plainly had a deep love and affection for him, which he reciprocated,’ the judge continued.
‘Relatively little of this judgment has turned on what they would perhaps regard to be the central difference between the 2015 and 2007 wills, namely whether Jack sought a seven-way or five-way split of the trust of the residuary estate.
‘Although on my application of the law I have found in the claimants’ favour, I have also accepted that a desire for a seven-way split was not obviously irrational or out of character for Jack.
‘I consider it to be extremely regrettable that, knowing Jack’s affection for both sides of the family, the parties were unable to find a means of resolving this claim without a trial.
‘Parties to cases of this sort should be under no illusions as to the emotional and financial toll they extract and the considerable ordeal for both sides of contesting the matter to a final judgment,’ the judge concluded.