A woman is suing her own sister after she was left with just £250 of her father’s will, while her sibling got £600,000.
Following the death of Laxmikant Patel, the family home in Harrow, Greater London, was left to his daughter Anju Patel, 58.
But sister Bhavenetta Stewart-Brown, 52, and brother Piyush Patel, 62, were left with just cash gifts as he’d said ‘as a father, I have not forgotten them’.
The younger daughter is now challenging the will in court, seeking to uphold an earlier one that split the £600,000 estate almost equally between the three.
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Bhavenetta claims her dad didn’t ‘know and approve’ the will’s contents, pointing out that it’s ‘odd’ it was written in English which she says her dad couldn’t read properly.
However, in some real sibling drama, Anju is fighting back, claiming her dad had every reason to practically disinherit the pair.
She claims the siblings had ‘failed in their sense of duty’ as Laxmikant’s children and that he’d branded Piyush as a ‘hugely controlling figure’ with Bhavenetta said to have ‘taken massive advantage’.
The father carved out a new life for his family, after migrating from Uganda in the early 1970s. The devoutly religious man attended temple every day, having worked shifts at a Ford motor plant while his wife, Shardaben, had run a newsagent’s.
Laxmikant died at the age of 85 in October 2021, with a previous 2019 will splitting his estate equally, except for an extra £50,000 to Anju to balance out a similar amount previously given to her siblings.
However, Bhavenetta’s barrister, Timothy Sherwin, went through the allegedly ‘odd’ circumstances in which the father made his final August 2021 will, soon after his lung cancer diagnosis.
He said Anju claimed Laxmikant gave the instructions to an associate of hers, Vijaykant Patel, who claimed to have been a friend of her dad’s.
“Two days after the diagnosis.... Vijaykant says he visited the deceased at the hospital,” explained the barrister.
“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 during that meeting, Laxmikant expressed ‘revulsion’ to his two other children who were only ‘after his property’, before saying: “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, Sheriwn added.
Bhavenetta claims Anju drifted apart from the family when she moved to India at 15 and later embraced beliefs contrasting her family’s, apparently not ‘rejoining the family’ until around 2018.
The barrister argued that the shift to cut out the other two children from their dad’s will was inexplicable.
Despite what has been argued, Anju denied being distanced from her parents as she said in court that it was only ever Bhavenetta she was distanced from.
“I wasn't estranged from my family, I was with my sister. She chose to disconnect from me,” she told the judge.
And her barrister claimed Laxmikant had become increasingly disillusioned with the younger sister, citing an 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’.
“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 James Kane.
The arriester claims the father was already deeply disgruntled with his youngest daughter while writing up his 2019 will, 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.
Piyush, who lives in Texas, is taking a neutral stance. The trial continues.
Jess Battison