The estate of a successful business owner who later trained as a helicopter pilot, but more importantly known as the engineer behind the early foetal heart monitor is at the centre of a court battle between his children and stepchildren.
Dr Jack Leonard was an engineer and inventor, who amassed an estate worth £5.4 million. He later went into business and learnt to fly helicopters. Dr Leonard was married twice and had children with his first wife, Audrey Leonard. He was said to have later treated the family of his second wife, Margaret Leonard “as his own”.
On his death from a suspected stroke, aged 87 in 2019, Dr Leonard split his fortune seven ways between his two families, with his stepchildren and their families inheriting shares that were equivalent to his own biological ones.
The two families, however, are now fighting over Dr Leonard’s final will, with his four children Megan, Sara, Jonathan and Andrew Leonard, saying their father’s step-children should be cut out.
They insist that their father, who suffered from dementia, wanted them to get his fortune and, in his final years, he did not “have the capacity” to understand the will which he made.
His second wife, Margaret Leonard’s children – glazing company boss Mark Smith, 66, and yoga teacher Elizabeth Leslie, 57 – however, claim they and the children of their deceased sister Melanie Turner were rightly included because of the close bonds they had formed with Dr Leonard after he met their mother.
Dr Leonard’s professional feats include co-founding Eurotherm International in 1965, which became a world leader in the supply of temperature control devices to industry, which had turned over £1 million by 1970. He married his first wife Audrey Leonard in 1958 after meeting at Manchester University, and she died in 1998.
The court then heard that Dr Leonard started using an internet dating service soon afterwards, which daughter Megan Leonard told the court was a “concern” for the family. Dr Leonard met Margaret through the dating service and their first meeting was on her 62nd birthday. They married in 1999 when Dr Leonard was 68 and his new wife 63, and lived together in West Sussex and latterly a £1.1 million house in Hutton Place, Brentwood, Essex.
They enjoyed a “very good standard of living”, the court heard as they travelled the world together and even flew for meals at hotels around the country in his helicopter.
Representing the stepchildren Mr Thomas Dumont KC said Dr Leonard had an “extraordinarily close, loving and devoted relationship” with his second wife and family, but the relationship he had with his own children was “different” because of the geographical distance between them, with the two (Andrew and Jonathan) living in the US.
The court heard Dr Leonard had made a will in 2007, leaving his share of their home to Margaret, with most of the rest split roughly five ways between her and his own children.
However, he then made the disputed will in October 2015, which left the Brentwood house to Margaret and the rest of his estate in trust for her life.
The children would receive their inheritance once she had died, but they would also have to share it seven ways with their step-siblings Mark and Elizabeth and with Dr Leonard’s deceased stepdaughter, Melanie’s, children also getting her share.
Giving evidence to the High Court in London, Sara Leonard – who with her sister, Megan, had been a director in their father’s flying school said that objection to the final will was not motivated by money. “It’s a point of principle,” she told Mrs Justice Joanna Smith adding: “I don’t think the 2015 will is one my father had capacity to make”.
However, Dr Leonard’s stepchildren, Mark Smith and Elizabeth Leslie have told the court that they and the children of their deceased sister Melanie Turner were rightfully included in the 2015 will because of the close bonds they had formed with Dr Leonard.
Mr Dumont said that an analysis of the documents used to draft the 2015 will demonstrated that the Dr Leonard had “testamentary capacity”. “Jack Leonard made a wholly reasonable and understandable will in 2015,” said the barrister, adding that he “did not cut out or exclude any of his own family, for whom he obviously had deep love”.
However, the court heard that the 2015 will had been prepared not by a trained solicitor but a tax advisor, without the usual precautions to make sure Dr Leonard was mentally fit.
Representing the biological children, Constance McDonnell KC said Dr Leonard had a “consistent and longstanding wish” that most of his wealth would ultimately pass to his own four children, which was shown by his making of the 2007 will eight years into his marriage to Margaret.
The court also heard that there was no evidence of the will being explained to Dr Leonard in the months leading up to its signing and he “could not have understood it merely by reading it to himself”.
The final decision now awaits the judge’s ruling.
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