The son of a multimillionaire car boot king has claimed his father’s dementia was so bad when he cut him out of his will that he ‘drove his car at some children during the car boot sale’ and attacked his own wife and children.
The fortune of Richard Scott – who fathered 19 children and ran the UK’s second biggest boot fair from his ‘vast’ Cheshire farm, before dying 81 in 2018 – is at the centre of a £43m will fight between his eldest son Adam Scott, 62, and his former cleaner-turned second bride Jennifer Scott, 60.
Formerly Richard’s ‘favourite’ son and ‘golden boy’, Adam was cut out of his father’s will after his father married Jennifer, who was instead left in control of his estate and farmland which she says could now be worth up to £43m.
The farm was where ITV’s Bargain Hunt-style show Boot Sale Challenge was filmed.
Richard Scott had six children with his first wife alongside six illegitimate children during that marriage.
He then fathered another seven with his second wife Jennifer, who had been working as his cleaner when the pair first began dating in 1994.
Richard and Jennifer eventually married in 2016, some 22 years later and just two years before his death.
The controversial wedding ceremony was jeopardised by Adam, who tried to prevent the marriage going ahead, claiming his father did not have the mental capacity to marry.
Richard was interviewed by four registrars and a lawyer from the local council, who cleared him to go ahead with the wedding.
Just months after his second marriage, he signed the two wills which disinherited Adam and left Jennifer in control of his wealth, as executor and a major beneficiary.
Now Adam is suing his step-mother, as executor of Richard’s estate, claiming his father was not in his right mind when he signed the two final wills which disinherited him.
Jennifer’s two sons, Gordon and William Redgrave-Scott, and Adam’s sister Rebecca Horley were also made beneficiaries of the last wills.
Adam is now challenging the validity of those two final wills on the basis that his father lacked mental capacity at the time they were made.
Adam wants to uphold a previous will which gave him the right to buy his father’s farm for its probate value – which he says is around £7m. The money would then be split amongst his other siblings.
The value of the land is disputed by Jennifer however, who says she has received offers for it amounting to around £43m.
London’s High Court heard evidence from psychiatric expert Dr Hugh Series, who told the court there were ‘objective indicators of changes in Richard’s behaviour’ around the time he signed the disputed wills, which could raise questions about his mental state and capacity.
One of the most shocking reports was that Richard ‘drove his car at some children during the car boot sale,’ he told Mr Justice Richards.
There were also reports that he ‘hit another car with his car at the car boot sale’ and of other ‘poor behaviour’ including ‘punching wife, pushing and grabbing children…six years into a dementia diagnosis,’ Dr Series said.
‘His wife was so worried about him, she slept in another room and locked the door,’ he said, adding that there had been reports of him ‘attacking the door with a hammer and a screwdriver and [having] to be stopped by his children’.
‘This seems to me to be quite extreme,’ Dr Series told the court.
But Alex Troup KC, for Jennifer and her children, told the judge that during the incident when he aimed his car at children attending the car boot sale, Richard had been on dementia drug Donepezil, having been wrongly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
The barrister claimed it was the drug that caused his unusual behaviour and that his mental state had ‘improved’ when he was taken off it after six months.
‘He made a valid will afterwards. The fact that before making that will he drove a car at another car is not much evidence of lack of testamentary capacity,’ he said.
He also pointed out that the ‘door attack’ is said to have happened in March 2018 – 18 months after the making of the disputed wills.
‘Richard always had a temper and could turn on anyone without warning,’ he said.
‘Dementia illnesses often have the effect of exaggerating peoples prior personality traits.’
Professor Alistair Burns, giving psychiatric evidence having been called by Jennifer, also disagreed that Richard showed signs of his capacity being impaired.
At the time when he made the disputed wills, he had been struggling to speak because of his dementia, but Prof Burns told the judge that it was Richard’s ability to express himself, rather than his ability to comprehend, which had been affected by the progressive disease.
Adam is also arguing that his father promised him that he would have the right to take over the farm after his death and that he sacrificed everything to commit to ‘a life of hard and unrelenting physical work’ on the back of those promises.
But lawyers for Jennifer claim that Richard knew exactly what he was doing when he disinherited his first-born after Adam’s relationship with his father ‘completely broke down’ when he tried to get Richard sectioned.
They also say he has no claim to his father’s estate on the basis of the alleged promises having already been handed land and property worth over £10m by Richard before his death.
Earlier in the trial, the court heard that Richard was a ‘mercurial character’ and ‘ruthless, single-minded and highly successful businessman’ who built up a valuable property empire, before switching to running giant and lucrative car boot sales.
Adam is also bringing an alternative claim under the law of proprietary estoppel – a legal remedy that can be used when a landowner has promised property will be transferred to someone else at a later date, only to later go back on the promise.
Mr Troup is arguing that if promises were made, they were not legally binding, telling the judge: ‘Richard was an inherently unreliable character, whose track record was of breaking promises.’
The trial continues.
