The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Supreme Court judge has rejected allegations that a will drawn up by an ex-deputy prime minister and his law firm on their client’s behalf was “fraudulent”.

Justice Ian Winder, in one of the last verdicts he delivered before becoming chief justice, upheld “the validity of a will” prepared by Desmond Bannister and Commonwealth Law Advocates for Alicia Maria Stockdale despite the claims and assertions made by her two sons.

Barrington Smith, an accountant, and Leon Smith, an attorney by profession, blocked the grant of probate for their mother’s estate after she died in Florida on August 22, 2015. One of their sisters, Betty Smith-Forbes, had initially obtained the probate grant on December 15 that same year but this was recalled due to her brothers’ challenge to largely being cut out of their mother’s will.

This triggered a Supreme Court battle between Betty and her two brothers, with Barrington and Leon alleging that the 2007 will drawn up by Commonwealth Law Advocates was “fraudulent in that the signature” on it was not their mother’s. They also cited what they alleged were other inconsistencies and inaccuracies, including that the will was not prepared by Anthony Thompson, said to be their mother’s “usual attorney” and who prepared an earlier will in 1993.

That latter will handed Alicia’s Windsor Terrace subdivision property to Leon, and her four apartments at Carmichael Road, to Barrington. Alicia, who had another daughter to take her total offspring to four, also gave the quartet equal shares in her Imperial Life life insurance policy.

However, the 2007 will stipulated a less equitable distribution of the deceased’s assets. Instead of the Carmichael Road property, Barrington was to be paid $50,000 for his interest in it and only receive his mother’s 1995 Toyota Corona. And Leon, who was said to have never fulfilled his promise to satisfy the FINCO mortgage secured on the same Bel Air Estates, Carmichael Road, was to get only the $50,000 Imperial Life insurance proceeds he had already received.

Betty asserted that the 2007 will, for which she was named executrix, is the valid document while Barrington and Leon argued differently. Mr Bannister, in a witness statement submitted on March 10, 2017, just two months before that year’s general election which him elected as Carmichael’s FNM MP, testified that he first met Alicia during his then-unsuccessful 2002 campaign to be elected as the constituency’s MP.

She then became his client, and Mr Bannister alleged that in 2004 she instructed him to prepare her last will and testament that excluded Leon from any benefit in the estate. After his election to office, and appointment as minister of education, in 2007 he was informed by Commonwealth Law Advocates staff that Alicia wanted to modify her will. Later, in 2015, he spoke to Alicia several times to confirm her will’s intentions.

Pearline Ingraham, an attorney with Commonwealth Law Advocates, testified that she was instructed to prepare the will by Mr Bannister in September 2007 - four months after he became a Cabinet minister. Other staff from the law firm confirmed they were present when Alicia signed the 2007 will.

Barrington, though, argued that the will’s reference to St Matthew’s Anglican Church was among “the conflicts and errors” because his mother had never attended it. He added that one of his sister’s names was incorrectly spelt, and there was no mention of several properties his mother owned. Leon made similar assertions, adding that the mortgage referred to had been dealt with.

Justice Winder said he had to “accept the will is valid and effective” given the statements from those Commonwealth Law Advocates staff who witnessed Alicia signing. He added the minor spelling error in the name of the other sister, Lois, was “hardly a cause for declaring the 2007 will as fraudulent or a forgery”, and there was nothing to suggest Alicia was of “unsound mind” when the will was signed because this occurred eight year prior to her death.

While acknowledging that Barrington and Leon were surprised by the changes, and their virtual exclusion from inheriting the estate, Justice Winder said Alicia was within her rights to change her mind and distribute her assets as she saw fit. Finding that Mr Bannister and the others were “truthful, independent witnesses”, he rejected the brothers’ claims of fraud and forgery.