Gareth Hughes v Carys Pritchard
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Jarman |
| Judgment Date | 11 June 2021 |
| Neutral Citation | [2021] EWHC 1580 (Ch) |
| Court | Chancery Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: PT-2020-CDF-000002 |
| Date | 11 June 2021 |
[2021] EWHC 1580 (Ch)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
BUSINESS AND PROPERTY COURTS IN WALES
PROPERTY TRUSTS AND PROBATE LIST (ChD)
In the estate of Evan Richard Hughes deceased
Wrexham Law Courts
Bodhyfyrd, Wrexham LL12 7BP
HIS HONOUR JUDGE Jarman QC
Sitting as a judge of the High Court
Case No: PT-2020-CDF-000002
Mr Elis Gomer (instructed by Allington Hughes Law) for the claimant
The first defendant appeared in person
Mr Alex Troup (instructed by Hugh James) for the second and third defendants
Hearing dates: 18–24 May 2021
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
HIS HONOUR JUDGE Jarman QC
HH Judge Jarman QC:
Introduction
In these proceedings the family of the late Evan Hughes who died in March 2017 aged 84, are in dispute as to the validity of his third and final will which he executed on 7 July 2016. I shall refer to each of the three wills by the year of execution. At that time he was suffering from moderately severe dementia and grieving for his son the late Elfed Hughes, who some months earlier had died in tragic circumstances. One of the provisions of the 2016 will was to leave some 58 acres of farmland on Anglesey known as Yr Efail to the claimant, his son Gareth. The defendants are respectively the sister, widow and eldest son of Elfed Hughes. Gwen Hughes, the second defendant, and her son Stephen Hughes, the third defendant, contend that the 2016 will is invalid on the grounds of lack of testamentary capacity, want of knowledge and approval and/or undue influence exerted by Gareth Hughes upon his father; or alternatively that Yr Efail is subject to a proprietary estoppel claim by Elfed' Hughes' estate whereby Yr Efail belongs in equity to that estate.
I heard over 20 witnesses over the course of four days, including the parties and the other two sons of Gwen Hughes. A few statements were agreed and I read two further statements admitted under the Civil Evidence Act 1995. Some of the witnesses gave evidence in person and some by video link. Some gave their evidence in Welsh and some in English. Mr Gomer of counsel represented Gareth Hughes and Mr Troup of counsel represented Gwen Hughes and Stephen Hughes. He called Carys Pritchard to give evidence on their behalf but otherwise although she is the first defendant she was not represented at the hearing and indicated that she did not have any questions and did not wish to make submissions.
Background
Despite the large number of witnesses, the background is largely uncontroversial. Evan Hughes lived all his life on Anglesey. He and the mother of his three children divorced in 1984. His second marriage also ended in divorce in 2003. During the last few years of his life he was in a personal relationship with Florence Jones.
He inherited farmland from his family and at the time of his death owned substantial assets including the bungalow where he lived known as Arfryn, 79 acres of farmland known as Bwchanan, another 58 acres of farmland about 3 miles away known as Yr Efail, and a cottage rented out known as Derwyddfa.
In the late 1980s he gave to his son Gareth and daughter Carys plots of land on which they built their homes, and to his son Elfed and his wife Bwchanan farmhouse, including 17 acres of farmland. The house which Gareth Hughes built on his plot was transferred to his ex-wife as part of their divorce settlement in 2008. Shortly afterwards, his father gave him another house which is now rented out.
As well as owning farmland, Evan Hughes was also an equal shareholder with his cousin Ian Hughes in a building company called J. Parry & Hughes Ltd (the company) which had been started by their grandfather over 100 years ago. The company's business consisted mainly of the construction of dwellings. Evan Hughes supervised the work on site, and his three children all worked for the company. His cousin and his daughter worked in the office and his sons worked on site. Ian Hughes retired in 1984 and sold half and gifted the other half of his shareholding to the three children in equal shares. Carys Pritchard's husband Ray took over the office work.
As well as working for the company, Elfed Hughes also farmed his father's farmland and looked after his flock of sheep and herd of cattle together with his own. He worked very long hours. In the winter he focussed on farming, particularly during lambing. During the rest of the year he worked on the farm early in the mornings, evenings and at weekends, and worked for the company during weekdays. He hired staff to work on the farm work, and in due course his three sons Stephen, Geraint and Sion also helped. He bought his own farmland next to that of his father and farmed both as a single unit, although accounts were kept separately. In 1993 they jointly rented a farm called Rhosbeirio which consisted of about 300 acres of farmland.
For many years Evan Hughes had let his children and others know of his intentions regarding what would happen to his estate after his death, namely that his shares in the company would be left to his son Gareth and daughter Carys equally, and the farmland would be left to his son Elfed. He executed his first will on 18 December 1990 which put these intentions into effect. His second wife was given a right to reside for life in the bungalow at Arfryn, with remainder to his three children, who also shared the residuary estate equally.
After his second divorce, he executed a new will on 7 August 2005 which repeated the provisions of the 1990 will as to the company shares and farmland and the residuary estate. The bungalow at Arfryn together with garden land and his personal effects were left to his daughter Carys. All other freehold and leasehold property was given to his son Elfed. A pecuniary legacy of £2,000 was given to each of his eight grandchildren.
By then Gareth Hughes had taken over the supervision of the building sites upon his father's retirement from the company in 2003. The company continued to trade successfully for some years. However by 2014, business was beginning to decrease and the company sold property to pay off debts. Each of his three children put capital into the company and in 2016 he made a director's loan of just under £108,000. By then the company was making a significant loss and work dried up.
Elfed Hughes' three sons each found employment away from the farm. However he was keen for his son Geraint to return to the farm to work and over a period of five years, including when the latter was at university, tried to persuade him to do so. Eventually, he succeeded, and in 2012 Geraint Hughes gave up his job with the local authority and went to work with his father on the farm for less than half the pay that he had been used to. In a particularly vivid part of the latter's oral evidence, he said that he continually asked his father for a wage rise after that, but his father became annoyed and told him not to ask, as everything would be his one day (spoken in Welsh, after an expletive, as “job gyd i ti un diwrnod”), so he stopped asking.
It was in 2014, by which time Evan Hughes was in his late 70s, that his family began to notice lapses of memory and behavioural changes in him. This went beyond such lapses as losing keys, forgetting to shut gates on the farm, being confused as to the time of day, and erratic driving, which many witnesses tell of. There are two or three incidents in this period which in my judgment are telling.
The first occurred in 2014 when he met his cousin Ian and his wife out shopping. Both gave evidence that he looked blank and did not recognise his cousin at first, as although by this time they met infrequently he and Ian Hughes had been business partners for more than 12 years.
The second happened in May 2015 when he went up to Bwchanan where his grandson Geraint was living at the time. Prior to this the two had not had a cross word. His grandfather (or Taid as he called him using a term in Welsh) started shouting at him for keeping sheep and cattle in the same field, although this had been the practice for many years. He was furious, and this left his grandson stunned and on the verge of tears.
During the end of lambing in March 2016, Geraint Hughes was at Bwchanan with his grandfather looking at some young lambs which had just been let out on a field known as Waen. His grandfather referred to the lambs as heifers and to the field as Yr Efail, which was the name of his land some two to three miles away.
His three children agreed that it would be wise for their father to execute a lasting power of attorney and agreed to share the cost equally. On 4 March 2015 he granted such a power to his daughter Carys. She says that it was her brother Gareth who approached her with this suggestion, which I accept.
Later that year Elfed Hughes became depressed and on 18 September 2015 he took his own life. This of course had a devastating effect on his immediate and his wider family including his father. The latter was hospitalised for two days in December 2015 because of gastrointestinal bleeding. He was confused and so his GP, Dr Harri Pritchard, referred him to a psychiatrist.
Later that month he was assessed by a consultant psychiatrist Dr Gutting. He scored 47/100 on an Addenbrooke's test, indicating a moderately severe degree of impairment. A CT scan was carried out on 27 April 2016 which revealed evidence of an old stroke and damage to the small sized blood vessels of the brain.
The making of the 2016 will
However, he was astute enough to realise that it might be prudent to change his will following his son's death. On 11 March...
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Gareth Hughes v Carys Pritchard
...THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE BUSINESS AND PROPERTY COURTS IN WALES PROPERTY TRUSTS AND PROBATE LIST (ChD) His Honour Judge Jarman QC [2021] EWHC 1580 (Ch) Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London, WC2A 2LL Penelope Reed QC and Elis Gomer (instructed by Allington Hughes Law) for the The 1 st Resp......
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Gareth Hughes v Carys Pritchard
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