The last memory I have of my father (Graham Sheppard, a former airline pilot and all-round lovely man) was in early August 2005 when I went to his house at Inkpen in Berkshire (the house was called ‘Hunters Way’).
I had recently told him that my wife Nicola and I had decided to separate. I had moved out of my marital home on 20th July 2005.
My father had been terminally ill for a long time and was at Inkpen with his partner (wife) Margaret. They had married in April 2004.
They were at the kitchen table, him sitting writing a new will and Margaret standing over his shoulder discussing the details with him. He had dated it 2nd August 2005 and had already signed it.
Margaret left us to go for a chat down in the end room which overlooked the orchard. A place with many happy memories from my childhood. He wanted to talk about his will.
The elephant in the room was that his earlier will hadn’t been executed correctly. I only realised the significance of that later, and the significance of the day I saw him at my Uncle Norrie’s – 12th October 2004 – the date on that earlier will – that was later to cause so much trouble when Margaret lied about what happened on that day.
One reason he was doing a new will – another handwritten one, similar to the last – was that they realised the earlier one wasn’t technically valid but also there were some adjustments in wording he wanted to make.
Added to those adjustments had been to leave more to me and he said he wanted to “help you get back on your feet” after splitting up with Nicola, my wife.
I remember looking upset about his illness and recall clearly his words that “nothing is forever.” That was the first time he’d really accepted openly that he didn’t have long left to live. He had spent a brave five years since diagnosis with an incredibly positive attitude that somehow he could be cured (He had a bone condition called myelofibrosis).
Thus he put my legacy as £150,000 rather than the £80,000 in his 2004 will, which they had a copy of. He had done the same for my brother Richard, to make it fair. He said that ‘Hunters Way’ was being left to Margaret ‘as long as she wanted it’ and then would go to the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), a charity in Wales he supported.
I was appreciative but sad. I did not object though I was sad he wasn’t leaving Hunters Way to my brother and me. He was concerned about the environment and global warming and believed that leaving the house to CAT was in effect like leaving it to his grandchildren, to help secure the planet for their future.
I was OK with that though slightly suspicious that others around him (Margaret in particular) had never wanted my brother and me to inherit our former family home, and had strongly reinforced the notion he should leave it to Margaret and/or CAT. But overall, he was being fair to me financially (the house was worth about £800,000 and their main home in Devon now, and a couple of rental properties in Weybridge are still that were in Margaret’s name).
Little did I know that the increase in my legacy would be a huge problem in the future in that an even earlier will, created in 2002 before their marriage (and thus as it turned out, invalid), left me £50,000.
Margaret used both these lesser amounts as threats against me challenging the wills, at different time, having admitted just after my father died (on 24th August 2005) that the last will had only been signed by her parents when my father was unconscious and dying in hospital – and thus it was invalid).
Challenging the wills was not something I would have done at all had she not treated me like an outcast after my father’s death, and then decided to lie to me about the circumstances of the 2004 will when I knew she had been heading up the A303 to meet my father at Norrie’s. I left Norrie’s for Law College an hour or so before she arrived.
She lied to place my father with her that day, before she said they drove up the A303 (even stating in her dairy that my father drove while she ‘nodded off for half an hour’ even though my father was seeing double at that time and not driving – mainly at her insistence).
The key thing here was that my father wasn’t present when that will was signed by Margaret’s parents on the morning of 12th October 2004, something that was vital for the will to be valid.
That she lied about this to try to make this will valid was what led to a bitter and protracted legal battle that would have never had happened had her lawyer (Richard Walford of Gilbert Stephens in Exeter) not advised her to create a fake witness statement and diary pages to try to get Summary Judgement. This failed.
And despite all this it was obvious in the end what she had done – especially obvious given some early e-mail comments from her (see Report and the full Timeline).
But in the High Court it went against me. I found out later that the judge had been chosen by them – a friend of Margaret’s relative, another High Court judge – and the trial had in effect been ‘staged’ By that point I had no lawyers and was acting alone/in person.
But I did expect the Court to be neutral!
I never wanted to force an intestacy; I wanted the executors of my father’s will, Margaret and her brother Chris Barling, to tell the truth about 12th October 2004.
For me, the TRUTH had to be the starting point. They still need to admit the truth to close this sorry saga.
VIDEO: LAST MEMORY