A ballet dancer who gave up her promising career to provide 24-hour care to her dementia-stricken grandmother has won a share of her £650,000 estate.
The case revolved around the will made by Mrs Joan Flood in 2006. In the will Mrs Flood left her £550,000 house and all her cash to her two children; Paul Flood and Annette Dargue.
However when Mrs Flood began to suffer with ill health seven-and-a-half years ago her granddaughter Lynsey Delaforte (Annette Dargue’s daughter) moved in to her house to care for her. Miss Delaforte, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dance, might have gone on to enjoy a career as a dancer had she not chosen to care for her grandmother instead.
Miss Delaforte brought a claim at Central London County Court which was disputed by her uncle who insisted that the care had been delivered under a contractual relationship as she had been paid for the care given.
However, after a three-day hearing, Judge Alan Johns QC today ruled that Miss Delaforte should receive £110,000 from her beloved grandmother’s estate made up of £66,000 from her uncle’s share of the estate and £44,000 from her mother’s.
‘That is not a reward for her plainly meritorious conduct in caring devotedly for her grandmother,’ said the judge.
‘It simply represents reasonable financial provision for her maintenance.’
During the trial, Miss Delaforte’s lawyers claimed that, having moved in to be her grandmother’s carer, she had been financially dependent on the widow.
She cooked and cleaned for the ‘challenging’ pensioner, dressed her, made sure she ate and looked after her in the most ‘loving and devoted’ way, a court heard.
‘This is a case where a grand-daughter provided 24-hour care to her grandmother at least six days a week in return for receiving modest state benefits and £100 per month,’ said her barrister, Sarah Harrison.
She added: ‘The devoted care provided by Miss Delaforte to the deceased placed a moral obligation on the deceased to provide for her.’
But Mr Flood claimed his niece only moved into the £550,000 house in Whitton, because she had taken redundancy from a ‘dull and energy-sapping’ marketing job and had nowhere to go.
In his defence to her claim to a share of Mrs Flood’s fortune, his barrister Simon Hunter argued that his niece caring for his mother had been a ‘commercial arrangement’.
However, Mrs Harrison said what Miss Delaforte did for her grandmother went far beyond what a professional carer would have done.
‘It is quite obvious the care she was providing could only be explained by love and devotion to her grandmother,’ she told Judge Johns.
Mr Flood admitted under cross-examination that it had not been a ‘commercial arrangement’ in the end. His barrister, Mr Hunter, conceded that Mr Flood’s admission that Miss Delaforte had cared for her grandmother not for money but for love meant she was due a payout from the estate.
He told the court: ‘There was no written contract. He would have refused a contract, because Miss Delafonte was a trusted family member.
‘I accept that the will doesn’t provide for Miss Delaforte and, therefore, does not make reasonable financial provision.’
The court heard she intends to use the money to support herself while she establishes a freelance dance teaching business.
