An Oxford professor is in the midst of a £1.25 million High Court battle after his mother cut him out of her will before she died.
Professor Christopher Gosden said his mother Jean Weddell, a distinguished physician, had ‘resolved’ to leave him her Edwardian home in Kennington, south London.
However, after she started a relationship with a female lawyer 37 years her junior, she tore up her will from a decade earlier.
The couple formed a civil partnership in 2007 and by the time Ms Weddell died in 2013, aged 84, she left nothing to her son. Documents lodged at London’s High Court revealed that Ms Weddell gifted much of her estate to her partner.
Professor Gosden, who was given up for adoption by his mother in the 1950s has launched a High Court fight after discovering his mother’s home had been sold without his knowledge in 2010.
Professor Gosden and his wife are suing solicitors who he says were responsible for drawing up the trust agreement, claiming they bungled it by leaving a loophole which allowed his mother to sell her house without his knowledge. The full trial is set to last four days and will commence later this year.
