It's a brave parent who would tell their brood before their death how much they are leaving to donkey rescue, writes ORNA MULCAHY
THERE’S NOTHING like a good family row over money, is there? Earlier in the week we had the Lamberts losing their long-running court battle to claim their Uncle Gordon’s €4.5 million estate, the bulk of which now goes to his friend, Anthony Lyons.
It was a case with great ingredients, a venerable businessman, valuable property and paintings, talkative domestic staff, and no less than 31 wills made between 1979 and 2003. His final will capped the amount that his family could inherit at €200,000, while a codicil effectively disinherited anyone who challenged the will.
What on éarth was he up to? It was a case that must have had many an anxious niece and nephew calling in on their elderly relative to see if there was anything he needed. Anything at all.
Then along came the Ryan family, six siblings at loggerheads over a property portfolio their late father had put in trust for them – buildings in Fitzwilliam Square, Dame Street and Temple Bar. The dispute was settled before it got an airing, but it had all the makings of a Maeve Binchy novel. Trinette of Countess Road, Killarney, and her brother Oran, a solicitor in posh Foxrock, vs their four brothers and sisters.
I was hooked. Why, for instance, did the four other children have such ordinary names by comparison – Martin, Marie, Declan and Irene? Was that significant? And why were they ganging up on Oran and Trinette? What were the “unfortunate tensions” that existed between the siblings, as suggested by barrister Lyndon McCann (another Harlequin Romance hero?), who opened the case? We’ll never know now. Only that the properties left to them in trust by their father, Judge Noel Ryan, had once been valued at €15 million, but were now worth a lot less. We can all feel their pain on that one.
The late psychiatrist Anthony Clare suggested that the key to a happy childhood and adulthood was to have lots of siblings – but it doesn’t always work out that way, particularly where there is a will involved.
I have six sisters and brothers myself and know what an almighty row there could be over an ambiguous will. One that didn’t set out who was to get the Christmas decorations. And the lights. Each of us has an elephantine, though highly selective, memory. Verbal pledges made years back have over time become gospel.
There can be no dispute about these things. For instance, a certain ring goes to my sister Sybil, a certain armchair to my brother Andrew, but I am definitely, definitely getting the cabinet on which the TV rests, and my mother’s maple leaf brooch. I hope that this is quite clear, because sometimes the sisters can be a bit sharp on the subject. The vulgar suggestion has been made that I might as well go around the house with stickers.
I imagine it’s the same in every big family, as well as in families where there are aunties and uncles with no children of their own and big farms or investments. The red dots are there in the imagination, if not in reality, placed on certain bits of silver, or pictures, or books, or on cottages, or acres of land with road frontage, not to mention whole apartment blocks and office buildings.
When in-laws or adult children come into the picture, the stage may well be set for epic rows and stand-offs in which every slight from the cradle onwards is thrown up. Add a step-parent or an impoverished divorcee or two, and things can get very nasty.
The trouble happens when those notional red dots are not backed up by documentary evidence – when things have been said, but not written down and witnessed. The Irish way, in politics and in families, is to try to keep everyone happy for as long as possible. That often means hinting at, or promising, outcomes that never in the end come to pass. This can lead to all kinds of unpleasant and unseemly bickering, sometimes beginning at the deathbed over a piece of jewellery on the person of the deceased.
The best will, and the best advice on wills I’ve come across, was that of Irish-American magnate, Jack Kelly, father of Princess Grace, and a self-made multimillionaire in his day. “I can think of nothing more ghastly than the heir sitting around listening to some representatives reading a will. They always remind me of buzzards and vultures awaiting the last breath of the stricken. Therefore, I would try to spare you that ordeal and let you read the will before I go to my reward – whatever it will be. I do hope that it will not be necessary to go into court over spoils, for to me the all-time low in family affairs is a court fight in which I have seen families engage.”
Good idea. But it’s a brave parent who would assemble their brood and spell out in advance just how much is being left to donkey rescue or Friends of the Earth, and how most of the rest is going to the alcoholic daughter, versus the son who has had Dad over to Sunday lunch for the last 30 years.
And, if there is money to leave behind, and everyone knows it, they’ll surely spend it before you’re dead – and then may want to have that happen sooner rather than later . . .