Two siblings who were cut out of their father’s £55m inheritance have won a ‘bitter’ court fight with their two brothers who received £6m each.
Multi-millionaire Reg Bond died aged 77 in March 2021 after turning £350 into a £55m business empire based on rubber tyres. He then turned his hand to racehorse breeding, producing a string of winners, many of which bore his family name.
Mr Bond gave away most of his fortune away but his final will split nearly all the remaining £12.5m between his sons Charlie and Graham. While leaving son Mike and daughter Lindsay with £325,000 each.
In April, Mike, 53, and Lindsay, 56, clashed with their brothers in court, claiming their dad’s November 2019 will was invalid because Mr Bond was too mentally frail to understand what he was signing.
During the trial, the court was told by witnesses on Mike and Lindsay’s side that Mr Bond had been so confused at the time he cut them out that he ‘couldn’t remember what he’d had for lunch’ each day.
Reg Bond (left) died in March 2021, aged 77. His final will left £12.5m to his two sons but left his other son and daughter out of the will
However, Charlie and Graham insisted that, despite health issues, he was competent, working out in the gym and even planning on getting behind the wheel of a new Bentley at the time.
Today, after a four-week trial in April and May, Mr Justice Michael Green gave judgment, finding that Charlie and Graham had not proved that Mr Bond had ‘testamentary capacity’ to make the will when he did.
The decision at London’s High Court means a previous 2017 will, splitting Mr Bond’s last £12.3m worth of assets between all four kids, will be reinstated.
Earlier in the trial, the judge heard that ‘hard-nosed businessman’ Mr Bond turned misfortune on its head after he was blinded in one eye by a shard of flying metal, aged 22, whilst working as a mechanic.
He used his £350 compensation to set himself up in a car parts business with his dad, beginning at a small garage in Pocklington, Yorkshire, in the 1960s.
That business developed into Bond International Tyres, which over the subsequent decades Mr Bond built up, turning it into one of the UK’s largest wholesalers, selling over five million tyres a year.
But older siblings Mike Bond (pictured) and Lindsay have a bitter court fight with their siblings to win a share of their father’s inheritance
As his fortune grew, he also turned his hand to the horse racing industry, realising a childhood dream by buying his first horse, Bond Boy, in 2002, which went on to win the Steward’s Cup.
He also made headlines when he paid £125,000 to have his star breeding mare, Forever Bond, mated with unbeaten flat race legend Frankel in 2014.
But tragedy struck in 2010 when Mr Bond was diagnosed with a brain tumour and wife, Betty, died in 2015.
The court heard that he began estate planning in 2017, handing over a total of £43.45m worth of shares in R&RC Bond Wholesale Ltd – the family company behind Bond International – equally to his four kids.
The gift amounted to 80 per cent of Reg’s shares in the company, and in 2017 he made a will dividing most of the rest of his fortune – amounting to £12.3m, including the rest of his shares – equally between his kids too, with Charlie getting his horses.
But in 2019, two years before his death, he made his final will, leaving his remaining £11m shareholding in the company for Charlie and Graham alone.
The remaining £1.3m in his estate, including the horses, was divided equally, leaving Mike and Lindsay with inheritances worth around £325,000 each and their younger brothers £5.825m each.
For Mike and Lindsay, Penelope Reed KC told the judge the siblings were left in shock when they learned of the new will after their dad’s death.
‘Reg had always treated his children equally,’ said the barrister, adding that Mike and Lindsay – who she described as a ‘daddy’s girl’ – had been ‘dumbfounded’ by the revelation.
Challenging the new will, she claimed Mr Bond had ‘lacked testamentary capacity’ when he made the decision to cut them out of most of his remaining fortune.
Charlie Bond, pictured with his wife Katie Atkinson-Bond, was handed half of his father’s remaining £12.3 million, with the other half left to his brother Graham
The will was also ‘invalid for want of knowledge and approval,’ she claimed, asking the judge to overturn it and reinstate the previous will from 2017.
As well as the brain tumour, Mr Bond suffered a fall in his garden in 2014, which led to pneumonia and other serious complications, leaving him needing ‘full-time care,’ the barrister continued.
‘Reg was vulnerable and reliant on his carers,’ she said.
‘There is a real suspicion that what ended up in the final will did not represent his testamentary wishes.’
But for Charlie and Graham, Clare Stanley KC told the court that, in fact, he had already been ‘generous’ in handing over most of his fortune to his kids.
Although all had worked in the family company at times, he considered Graham and Charlie to be ‘the bedrock of the business,’ she added.
Doctors’ records also proved their dad’s mind was fine, while videos in the run-up to the making of the will showed him doing squats in a gym.
‘He had an active social life, was out and about, had bought a Bentley and wanted to get his driving licence back,’ she said.
But giving judgment today, Mr Justice Michael Green found that Charlie and Graham had not proved their dad had capacity to make the will.
He pointed out that two experts in the case had agreed that the sibling’s father suffered a decline due to his brain tumour, surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
A crucial question in deciding whether the will was valid was whether he knew that, in leaving the company to Charlie and Graham, he was cutting out Mike and Lindsay of most of their inheritance.
‘Everything that he had done to date, including the gifts of shares both in….2017 and the lifetime gifts in 2018 was on the basis of strict equality between the children,’ said the judge.
‘I cannot see that there is any evidence that Reg actually appreciated that that was the effect of what he was doing in the 2019 will; nor was this clearly explained to him.’
‘I am not persuaded that Reg was playing any real part in the process and was merely, if anything, just agreeing to whatever was being put before him.
‘Accordingly, I find that Charlie and Greg (Graham) have not satisfied me on the balance of probabilities that Reg had testamentary capacity to make the 2019 will.’
There was also no evidence he read the will himself and ‘no explanation that, by making such a gift, he was excluding two of his children from the bulk of his estate.
‘There is no indication that he realised this and that it involved a substantial departure from his previous wills which, save in respect of the horses, had treated all his children equally.’
‘In the circumstances, I find in favour of Mike and Lindsay on their counterclaim which means that I set aside the 2019 will and the codicil and pronounce in favour of the August 2017 will.’
He added: ‘It is unfortunate, to say the least, that this family fallout had to come to this, with all the time and expense incurred in fighting such a bitter trial.
‘I would just like to say that it has saddened me greatly to see how these bitter disputes between the siblings have engulfed the Bond family and that they have not been able to settle their differences out of court.
‘I know that Charlie and Greg, and all their witnesses, will be unhappy with the outcome as set out in my judgment but I would urge the whole family to consider carefully whether it is in any of their or their families’ interests to prolong this dispiriting situation any further.’
