Inheritance Wars: The Tyre Millionaire, the Secret Will and the Four Children at War

Reg Bond had built a fortune from tyres.

A self-made businessman, racehorse owner and breeder, he had four children.

For years, his testamentary arrangements broadly reflected a simple proposition: the family wealth would be shared between them.

Then everything changed.

In November 2019, less than eighteen months before his death, Reg signed a new will.

Its effect was dramatic.

Two of his children stood to receive the most valuable part of his remaining wealth. The other two were largely cut out of it.

The new arrangements were kept secret from them.

And after Reg died, the four siblings went to war.

The resulting case was Bond & Anor v Webster & Ors [2024] EWHC 1972 (Ch).

It required a four-week High Court trial, 22 witnesses and extensive expert evidence.

At its heart was a deceptively simple question:

Was this really Reg’s will?

Ten Inheritance Wars — ten remarkable cases about families, fortunes, wills and the cost of inheritance litigation.

From tyres to millions

Reginald Charles Bond was a remarkable businessman.

He built a highly successful tyre business and became a wealthy man. He also developed a significant interest in horse racing as an owner and breeder.

Reg and his wife Betty had four children: Lindsay, Mike, Greg and Charlie.

Betty died in 2015 after 51 years of marriage.

By then Reg’s health had become considerably more complicated.

In 2010 he had been diagnosed with a brain tumour following a seizure. He underwent surgery and radiotherapy.

In 2014 he suffered a serious fall and subsequently became extremely ill with pneumonia and sepsis. Eventually he required round-the-clock care.

But Reg remained at the centre of substantial family and business interests.

And those interests were worth millions.

Simplified visual explainer

Bond v Webster — how the dispute unfolded

1. 1

   2010 — Brain tumour diagnosed

2. 2

   2015 — Betty Bond dies

3. 3

   2017 — Will broadly provides for all four children

4. 4

   2019 — New will radically changes the distribution of the key business interests

5. 5

   2021 — Reg Bond dies

6. 6

   2024 — Four-week High Court trial

7. 7

   2019 will fails

8. 8

   2017 will prevails

A simplified chronology drawn from the reported judgment. It is not legal advice.

The 2017 will

In August 2017 Reg made a will.

Its broad effect was to divide his estate between his four children. In particular, his shares in the family tyre business were to be distributed equally between them.

Whatever disagreements existed within the family, the testamentary position was therefore relatively straightforward:

Four children. Four shares.

But two years later that changed dramatically.

The secret plan

During 2019 there were major developments concerning the family business and Reg’s affairs.

A new will was prepared.

Mike and Lindsay knew nothing about it.

Charlie, by contrast, was closely involved in the circumstances surrounding the changes.

Secrecy was a striking feature. The new arrangements were deliberately kept from Mike and Lindsay.

The evidence concerning Reg’s carers and the reporting of Mike and Lindsay’s visits also formed part of the factual background considered by the court.

Against that background, Reg was taken through the process of making a radically different will.

The 2019 will

On 19 November 2019 Reg signed the new will.

The crucial provision concerned his shares in the family tyre businesses.

Under the earlier will, those interests had effectively been shared between all four children. Under the 2019 will, the relevant shares were left to Charlie and Greg.

Mike and Lindsay were excluded from Reg’s most valuable asset.

The judgment records that Reg’s shares in the holding company were valued in the inheritance-tax return at approximately £11 million.

Mike and Lindsay were each left £325,000 under the new arrangements.

They did not discover the existence of the 2019 will until after their father’s death.

The judgment records their reaction as “dumbfounded”.

Six meetings with a will draftsman

On the face of things, challenging the will was not straightforward.

This was not a document scribbled on a piece of paper at Reg’s bedside. An experienced will draftsman had been involved.

There had been six meetings.

The will had been formally executed. A doctor had also provided a letter concerning Reg’s mental condition.

These are circumstances which might ordinarily make a challenge considerably more difficult.

But the existence of professional involvement is not conclusive.

The court examined what had actually happened during the will-making process.

And that examination caused serious concern.

The golden rule

Where an elderly or seriously ill person makes a will, practitioners have long been encouraged to follow what is known as the golden rule.

In appropriate circumstances, a medical practitioner should assess and record the testator’s capacity.

It is not a rule of law. Failure to follow it does not automatically invalidate a will. Nor does compliance automatically make a will valid.

Its purpose is evidential. If somebody’s capacity may later be questioned, contemporaneous independent evidence can be enormously important.

In Reg’s case there was medical involvement.

But there was a problem. The doctor had not actually been asked to assess testamentary capacity against the relevant legal test.

A medical letter was therefore not necessarily the answer it might initially have appeared to be.

Good days and bad days

The evidence demonstrated that Reg’s mental functioning fluctuated.

There were good days. And there were bad days.

That mattered enormously.

Capacity is assessed in relation to the relevant decision at the relevant time.

A person is not necessarily incapable of making a will simply because they are elderly, ill, forgetful or cognitively impaired.

Equally, demonstrating that somebody could hold a conversation does not necessarily establish that they possessed the capacity required to understand a complex testamentary decision involving substantial business interests.

Then there were the videos

Perhaps one of the most striking aspects of Bond v Webster was the video evidence.

Videos had been taken of Reg during some of the dealings concerning his affairs. They were apparently intended to demonstrate his involvement.

Instead, one of them had precisely the opposite effect.

The judge considered footage from 7 August 2019 particularly troubling. Michael Green J regarded Reg’s condition on that occasion as alarming.

In a remarkable irony, evidence apparently created to protect the transactions ultimately helped undermine the case that Reg possessed the necessary capacity.

The 150-year-old test

The legal test remained the familiar test originating in Banks v Goodfellow (1870).

Broadly, a testator must be capable of understanding:

• the nature and effect of making a will;
• the extent of the property being disposed of;
• the claims of those whom they ought to consider; and
• must not be affected by a disorder or delusion which improperly influences the disposition.

The question concerns the person’s ability to understand. It is not simply a memory test.

And the complexity of the decision matters.

Understanding a simple disposition of modest savings may be very different from understanding the consequences of restructuring testamentary arrangements involving valuable companies, different shareholdings and four competing children.

Did Reg really give the instructions?

This became one of the central questions.

The court examined the process by which instructions for the new will had supposedly emerged.

Despite the six meetings, the court was not satisfied that the process demonstrated a genuine testamentary decision by Reg of the kind necessary to sustain the later will.

That distinction is fundamental.

A will must be the testator’s will.

Not the family’s. Not the beneficiary’s. Not the adviser’s.

And not simply a document which somebody can be persuaded to sign.

The court’s decision

The court was not satisfied that those seeking to uphold the 2019 will had proved that Reg possessed testamentary capacity when he executed it.

Michael Green J went further. Even if that conclusion about capacity were wrong, the court was not satisfied that Reg knew and approved the contents of the 2019 will.

The 2019 will and subsequent codicil therefore failed.

The court pronounced in favour of the August 2017 will.

What about undue influence?

It would be tempting to describe Bond as a case in which the court found that Charlie had unduly influenced his father.

That would be wrong.

Undue influence and fraudulent calumny had been raised but were not pursued at trial.

The court was careful not to allow the knowledge-and-approval challenge to become a disguised allegation of dishonesty or undue influence.

The successful grounds were lack of testamentary capacity and want of knowledge and approval.

Those concepts should not be confused.

Four children. Four weeks. 22 witnesses.

The scale of the litigation was extraordinary.

The trial occupied approximately four weeks. There were 22 witnesses.

There were two experts in old-age psychiatry. There were videos. Medical records. Professional files. Business documents. Messages between family members. Evidence from carers. And years of family history.

What had once been a family of four children ultimately became opposing parties in major High Court probate litigation.

The will writer’s file

Bond contains an important practical lesson.

When a vulnerable person makes a significant change to a previous testamentary arrangement, particularly one favouring people involved in the surrounding process, the contemporaneous professional record may later become crucial.

Questions which appear uncomfortable at the time may be exactly the questions which prevent litigation afterwards.

• Why is the will changing?
• What was the previous will?
• Why are particular children being excluded?
• Does the testator understand the value and structure of the estate?
• Has the testator been seen alone?
• Where did the instructions originate?
• Has capacity actually been assessed against the correct legal test?

Those are not bureaucratic niceties. In a later probate trial, they may become the case.

The absent witness — again

Bond also contains the recurring problem at the heart of so many Inheritance Wars.

The one person everybody was talking about could no longer speak.

Reg could not enter the witness box. He could not explain why he had changed his will. He could not explain what he understood about the business arrangements. He could not say whether the 2019 disposition genuinely represented what he wanted.

Instead, 22 other witnesses attempted to reconstruct what Reg had known and wanted.

That is the peculiar difficulty of contested probate litigation: everybody can give evidence except the person whose intentions matter most.

The same difficulty runs through Rea v Rea, Clitheroe v Bond and Crew v Oakley.

Could mediation have resolved it?

Perhaps.

But Bond illustrates an important limit to the simplistic proposition that every inheritance dispute should settle.

There was a genuine legal question about whether the 2019 will was valid.

Mike and Lindsay challenged their father’s capacity and whether he genuinely knew and approved the later arrangements. Those seeking to uphold the will relied upon a formally executed document produced with professional involvement.

Sometimes a judicial determination really is necessary.

But that does not mean it is the only possible outcome.

The settlement question was different

At mediation, nobody needed to prove exactly what had happened inside Reg’s mind in November 2019.

The questions could instead have been:

• What happens if the 2019 will fails?
• What happens if it survives?
• How strong is the medical evidence?
• How will the professional witnesses perform under cross-examination?
• What will the videos look like to a judge?
• How much will four weeks in the High Court cost?

And perhaps most importantly: is there a division of the family wealth which makes this trial unnecessary?

That is a different question from asking which side is legally right.

The cost of winning

There is another cost which cannot readily be quantified.

At the end of the case the judge referred to the bitter disputes which had engulfed the Bond family and encouraged reflection on whether prolonging those disputes could really be in anyone’s interests.

That observation came after a four-week trial.

By then the evidence had been given. Family members had been cross-examined. Private communications had become evidence. A judgment had been delivered. And one side had won.

Litigation can determine which will is legally valid. It cannot necessarily repair what happened while deciding it.

Contested probate claims of this kind are becoming more common: see our analysis of rising inheritance disputes and probate caveats.

The lesson from Bond v Webster

Bond is not simply a case about an elderly millionaire.

It is about something much more fundamental.

A will is an intensely personal legal act.

The greater the vulnerability of the person making it — and the greater the change being made — the more important it becomes to establish that the decision really is theirs.

Reg Bond’s 2019 will was formally executed. An experienced professional was involved. There had been six meetings. There was medical evidence.

Yet the will still failed.

Ultimately the court was not satisfied that it represented a testamentary decision Reg had the capacity to make and genuinely knew and approved.

The legal question was: “Was this really Reg’s will?”

The High Court decided that the 2019 will could not stand.

But there was another question the four children might have asked before four weeks of evidence were heard:

“How much of our father’s fortune — and our family — are we prepared to spend finding out?”

That is the question mediation is designed to explore.

Discuss a contested will

ProMediate Inheritance, Probate & Trusts provides specialist mediation for disputes involving contested wills, testamentary capacity, knowledge and approval, estates, executors and beneficiaries.

Mediation can take place before proceedings or at any stage of contentious probate litigation.

Discuss a Mediation · Meet Our Mediators

Next in Inheritance Wars — from the archives

The Man Who Saw Devils — But Was Still Sane Enough to Make a Will

Banks v Goodfellow (1870)

More than 150 years ago, a man suffering extraordinary delusions left his property to his niece. The resulting dispute produced the legal test for testamentary capacity which remains fundamental today.

Coming next in the Inheritance Wars series.

This article provides general information and commentary on Bond & Anor v Webster & Ors [2024] EWHC 1972 (Ch). It does not constitute legal advice.