A court battle between between two siblings who found out in adulthood one was the product of an affair are to share a £14.5m trust fund after a High Court judge ruled the intention of their father’s will was to include his ‘children’ regardless of their biological relationship to him.
Stuart Marcus had built a games business from humble beginnings in East London to a successful enterprise. He and his wife had two children, Edward Marcus and Jonathan Marcus. Shortly before he died, Stuart Marcus had placed £14.5m in a trust for the benefit of his children.
The cause of the dispute was the revelation Edward was not his father’s son, but was in fact the product of an affair his mother, Stuart’s wife, had with a lawyer, Sydney Glossop. Importantly for the purposes of the case this was not something Stuart was aware of before his death.
Edward’s brother Jonathan disputed the right of Edward to be the benficiairy of the trust, arguing as he was not Stuart’s bioloigcal child, he would not entitled to the money. In a court case last year DNA evidence confirmed Edward was not Stuart’s child, but the judge ruled he could still benefit from the trust on the basis Stuart’s intentions were for his ‘children’ to be the beneficiaries.
After appealing the decision. the case was taken to the High Court last month where Mr Justice Mann upheld the original decision explaining Stuart’s choice of the word ‘children’ included Edward because ‘in the real world (children) described both Edward and Jonathan perfectly.’
“Settlement was intended to operate in the real world, and in that real world — Stuart’s real world in particular — Edward was Stuart’s child.”
Adding Edward had been treated as a biological child ‘for practical, familial and all other purposes.’
“Stuart’s intention is exactly the same … he intended the word to include Edward,”
said the judge adding the ‘relevant’ point in the dispute was who he was describing in his wishes, and not what he was or wasn’t aware of in terms of the biological relationship to his children.
