Family successfully overturns Will leaving money to hairdresser

Posted 15/08/2010

A hairdresser has been ordered to pay back an inheritance left to her by two elderly sisters after their family successfully had their Will overturned.

The Daily Mail reported in July 2010 that Ethel Willson and Mabel Cook had a joint Will from 1991 which decreed that their £400,000 estate should go to their family when both passed away.

However, it was found that the Will had been changed in 2006 when Mrs Willson died, leaving the vast majority to their friend and hairdresser Jill Fraser, 72.

Their family went to the High Court to dispute the Will, arguing that Mrs Willson had been too frail and weak to agree to alter it.

Now, Judge Jonathan Gaunt QC has agreed and ordered Ms Fraser to pay back the £380,000 left to her by the elderly sisters, upholding the original document.

He said Mrs Willson and Mrs Cook “made mutual promises to each other and it was either an explicit, or implicit, part of those promises that the will of the survivor would not be altered”.