Siblings battle over dad's £600,000 fortune as two left with just £250 in will

Daily Mirror

4 days ago

Laxmikant Patel's eldest daughter Anju Patel was handed her dad's £600,000 house while younger daughter Bhavenetta Stewart-Brown and son Piyush Patel received just £250 each
A woman is suing her sister after she was left just £250 in her father's £600,000 will with the other bagging almost every other penny.
Laxmikant Patel's will handed the £600,000 family home in Cambridge Road, Harrow, to his eldest daughter, Anju Patel, 58, while leaving younger daughter Bhavenetta Stewart-Brown, 52, and son Piyush Patel, 62, just £250 each. Anju claims their dad explained his drastic decision by saying he had come to 'mistrust' Mrs Stewart-Brown and that she and her brother had "failed in their sense of duty" as his children. He then left them tiny cash gifts, saying: "But as a father, I have not forgotten them".
The will is now under fierce challenge in court, with Mrs Stewart-Brown claiming her dad did not "know and approve" its contents, suggesting the will was "odd" as it was written in English, a language she claims he couldn't read properly.
She is seeking to uphold an earlier will, splitting the £600,000 estate almost equally between the three siblings, but Anju is fighting back and insisting her dad had every reason to all but disinherit the others.
He claimed the dad had branded his son Piyush a 'hugely controlling figure', alleging he had declined to scatter his dead mum's ashes in India, while also claiming Mrs Stewart-Brown - an inspector with the Care Quality Commission - 'apparently has a bad temper' and 'has taken massive advantage of her father'.
At the High Court, judge Deputy Master Jason Raeburn, heard Laxmikant Patel was a gentle and hard-working character who had carved out a new life for his family after migrating from Uganda in the early 1970s, working shifts at the Ford motor plant in Dagenham while his wife, Shardaben, ran a newsagent's.
A devoutly religious man, he attended the Swaminarayan temple in Neasden, north London, every day and he and his wife donated around £180,000 to the temple throughout their lives before his death at the age of 85 in October 2021.
In his previous will of October 2019 he had split his estate equally, except for an extra £50,000 bequest to Anju to balance out similar amounts he had previously handed to his other two children.
But Mrs Stewart-Brown's barrister, Timothy Sherwin, highlighted allegedly 'odd' circumstances in which Laxmikant made his last August 2021 will, soon after he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
He said Anju claimed that her dad gave instructions for his will to Vijaykant Patel, an associate of hers from their Hare Krishna temple who claimed to have also been a friend of her father's and came to visit him in his bed in London's Northwick Hospital.
'Two days after the diagnosis....Vijaykant says he visited the deceased at the hospital,' the barrister said. 'He says that he was a friend of the deceased and that he met Anju on the ward. That is very much disputed. However, it is common ground that he knew Anju from their Hare Krishna temple.
'Vijaykant goes on to say that the deceased asked him whether he knew anyone who could make a will, and that Vijaykant told the deceased that he could do so." He said Vijaykant claims to have taken notes of the meeting, in which Laxmikant expressed "revulsion" towards Mrs Stewart-Brown and Piyush, who he said were only "after his property," before declaring: "Everything goes to Anju."
The barrister continued: 'It is thus Vijaykant's evidence that he had a nearly-one-hour meeting with a man suffering from serious respiratory disease, and who had just been diagnosed with lung cancer, without incident or difficulty; and was given instructions which were completely contrary to the deceased's wishes as expressed in the earlier 2018 and 2019 wills.'
Vijaykant was not a qualified lawyer, said Mr Sherwin, also commenting: 'But there is much more to excite the court's suspicion - the purported execution of the 2021 will took place shortly after the deceased was admitted to hospital for lethargy, dizziness and coughing up blood. That will was in English, a language he could not properly read,' he said.
Mrs Stewart-Brown also claims her older sister drifted apart from the family after the age of 15 when she moved to India, later embracing the Hare Krishna creed in contrast to her family's Swaminarayan Hindu beliefs. It was not until around 2018 that Anju 'rejoined the family', she claims.
Given that the earlier will had planned for a mainly equal split of his estate, the shift to cutting out Bhavenetta and her brother two years later was inexplicable, argued the barrister.
'The purported reason for that change – namely Bhavenetta's and Piyush's alleged wrongdoing – will be analysed at trial. One would expect a major and incontrovertible change in circumstances, however, to explain so radical a departure and there is none," he added.
Claiming that Anju's relationship with her dad had been largely 'fractured' until 2018, the barrister continued: 'From 2019 onwards, however, Anju and (her husband) began to take much more involvement in the deceased's finances and personal affairs.
'They procured the 2019 will. They controlled access to the deceased, especially during the key period of August 2021. Further, they are Hare Krishna devotees, and they isolated the deceased from his previous dedication to the Swaminarayan faith, which he shared with his previous friends, and the other members of his family.'
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But Anju, who returned to live in the UK in 1983, has denied being distanced from her parents, with her barrister, James Kane, claiming she always "shared a close and loving relationship" with them.
From the witness box, Anju herself also insisted that she had only ever been distanced from Mrs Stewart-Brown and that there was no conflict between her and her parents. 'I wasn't estranged from my family, I was with my sister. She chose to disconnect from me,' she told the judge.
In fact, her barrister said, their dad had become increasingly disillusioned with Mrs Stewart-Brown citing an alleged incident from 2018 in which she 'removed important documents from a locker or safe deposit box belonging to him, including the title deeds to the property, insurance documents and bank statements'.
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'The documentary evidence makes plain that by - at the latest - October 2019, Laxmikant had formed a sharply negative view of both Piyush and Bhavenetta,' argued Mr Kane. By the time he drew up his 2019 will, he was already deeply disgruntled with Mrs Stewart-Brown and his son, claimed the barrister, citing his comments to the will writer at the time in which he said Bhavenetta 'has taken massive advantage of her father'.
'Although he did not act on this view immediately, after his diagnosis with cancer in August 2021, he decided to act," he said. "He asked his friend Vijaykant to draw up a will for him in favour of Anju, the child he felt had done most for him. 'Vijaykant did so and Laxmikant executed the will.
"The evidence of Vijaykant and the attesting witnesses is clear that Laxmikant knew perfectly well what the effect of executing the will would be and approved of it.' As executor of the estate Vijaykant Patel is defending the claim alongside Anju, while the two sisters' older brother, Piyush, who lives in Texas, is taking a neutral stance.
The trial is continuing.