Two executors have been removed and ordered to pay costs after the High Court found that lengthy delays in the administration of an estate amounted to misconduct and seriously unreasonable behaviour. Anne Elizabeth Helme and Daniel Jones must also pay the costs of the litigation brought by beneficiaries.
Sitting at Bristol’s Business and Property Courts, HHJ Paul Matthews heard the defendants had been appointed the executors of the estate of Mary Organ, who died in a care home in December 2017, unmarried and with no children.
Ms Organ’s will gave a number of pecuniary legacies totalling £200,000, including a gift of £100,000 to Jones, with legacies to former friends and colleagues, including property and land. The total value of the estate at the date of death was £3,686,904.
The defendants became aware of Ms Organ’s death in January 2018, but did not inform the claimants of their interest. When the claimants were made aware of their interest in the estate from another beneficiary, in August 2020, they, and subsequently their solicitors, contacted the defendants encouraging them to progress the administration of the estate.
In December last year, the claimants applied to the court for relief including the appointment of Stone King Trust Corporation Limited in place of the defendants as the personal representatives of the estate, and as trustees of Ms Organ’s will.
An application for interim relief was also made, when an injunction was granted that the defendants should not dispose of or diminish the value of any asset of the estate until determination of the claim or further order was made.
The claimants had raised a number of complaints about the defendants. As well as failing to notify them of their interest for 18 months, they said there had been delays in the administration of the estate; a lack of oversight on work done on a farm which formed part of the estate; the sale of farm machinery belonging to the estate; fees charged to the estate by Helme at her professional rate for watering cattle; a conflict of interest caused by two solicitors in the same firm (one the employee of the other) acting on opposite sides of a sale transaction; failing to put properties belonging to the estate on the market when instructed to do so; and accelerating a sale of properties belonging to the estate when an injunction against doing so had been lodged.
HHJ Matthews determined that there was substance in all but one complaint; that of the lack of oversight on works done on the farm, which he said he was not in a position to determine.
In relation to the others, he noted:
“…the defendants have demonstrated a poor understanding of the need for executors to avoid even the potential for a conflict of interest (the fourth to seventh complaints refer), they have taken far too long in the administration so far (the second and seventh complaints refer), probably because they appointed solicitors who did not have the resources or experience to resolve the problems thrown up by the administration in a timely manner, and they have sought to avoid the consequences of their potential conflicts of interest and delays in accelerating the sale of the Farm at the last minute (the eighth complaint refers)”.
By the time of the Bristol hearing earlier this month, the defendants were in agreement that they should be replaced. The argument before the court therefore centred around costs and indemnity, specifically as to:
(i) whether the defendants should be ordered to pay the claimants’ costs of the claim and the application for an injunction (and, if so, on the indemnity basis or the standard basis), and
(ii) whether the defendants would be entitled to an indemnity out of the estate for their own legal costs and any that they were ordered to pay to the claimants.
Determining that the defendants’ conduct of the proceedings was “out of the norm,” HHJ Matthews explained:
“Not only was there the acceleration of the exchange of contracts to avoid the possibility of an injunction to prevent that happening, without any notice that it would take place, but the defendants did not serve their evidence in complete form on the claimants by the date to which their counsel had agreed, and they then served further evidence for which they had no permission. The defendants also refused more than one offer from the claimants to be removed without paying their costs. It may perhaps be that their solicitors do not have much experience of this kind of High Court litigation. But that is a matter between the defendants and their solicitors, and is not an answer to the claimants’ submission. In my judgment, the defendants must pay the claimants’ costs on the indemnity basis.”
The “seriously unreasonable behaviour” of the defendants amounted to misconduct and breaches of their duty towards those entitled to the due administration of the estate, he concluded.
“Taken together, the defendants should certainly not be entitled to an indemnity out of the estate for the costs of this litigation. Whether there is any issue as between the two defendants as to the apportionment of responsibility for this sorry state of affairs is not before me, and can be left to be dealt with (if at all) on a subsequent occasion.”
Dorothy House & Anor v Anne Elizabeth Helme & Anor [2026] EWHC 75 (Ch)
