RSPCA got my £1.5m inheritance
Hannah Fletcher
She worked on their farm for 40 years; she cared for them in their old age; she uprooted her family to be near them – but it was only after they died that Christine Gill discovered that her parents had written her out of their will and left their £1.5 million estate to an animal charity. Dr Gill, 56, was left “deeply hurt and bewildered” by the disinheritance, which meant that Potto Carr Farm, near Potto, North Yorkshire, was bequeathed in its 287-acre entirety to the RSPCA.
“To lose the farm is like having my heart and soul ripped out,” she said. “It’s the farm that I’ve grown up on, that I’ve worked on and that I’ve arranged my life around.”
From the age of 13 and throughout her university studies, Dr Gill worked on Potto Carr, driving tractors and picking potatoes.
In 1986 she bought a house next to Potto Carr, with her husband, Andrew Baczkowski, so that she could be close to her parents and combine her work in the department of statistics at the University of Leeds with work on their farm.
“As a daughter, I could not have done more,” Dr Gill said yesterday. But, she said, she now felt as if she had “been used as a dogsbody”.
“We worked on the farm because we were part of the family and we were helping the farm to survive – and because one day we expected we would pass the farm on to the next generation.”
Now, it is Dr Gill’s ten-year-old son, Christopher, who “loses out”.
“He’s mad about farming,” said Dr Gill, as she described a living-room floor divided into pretend fields. “He even has a crop rotation schedule. It’s heartbreaking to watch him and know that his fields are under such a threat.
“My parents had plenty of scope to make a substantial donation to charity without disinheriting me so completely that nothing was to be left to me, not even any family mementos.”
Last Friday the contents of the farmhouse, including antiques, family photos and even a teddy bear that Dr Gill made for her mother as a child were “auctioned off for a pittance”.
“I watched the destruction of my family history,” said Dr Gill. “I watched lot after lot go under the hammer – £1 here, £2 there.” The proceeds went to the RSPCA.
Her parents’ bequest to the RSPCA has rankled with Dr Gill all the more, she says, because her parents, both advocates of hunting, never had anything to do with the charity, and “never wrote a cheque to the RSPCA”.
Dr Gill’s father, John, died in 1999, leaving Dr Gill, an only child, to care for her mother, Joyce, who suffered from severe social phobia. “I cared for her; I shopped for her; I drove her; I bought her clothes; I took them back if she didn’t like them,” Dr Gill said.
Mrs Gill died in August 2006 and it was then that Dr Gill saw her parents’ wills. The “mirror wills” were identical and left everything to each other, and then, once they had both died, to the RSPCA.
Dr Gill said that a possible motive for the disinheritance was that her parents did not like her half-Polish husband. But, she said: “He’s never been to Poland. He doesn’t speak Polish. And he looks like a Yorkshireman to me.” Dr Gill also suggested that her father could have had a “bee in his bonnet” about not having a son when he drew up his will. By the time his grandson, Christopher, was born, he was 80 and simply forgot or didn’t bother to change it.
Dr Gill is now having court papers drawn up to challenge the wills under the 1975 Inheritance Act and must lodge them by October 15. She has also been trying to negotiate with the RSPCA but said yesterday that it had treated her “ruthlessly”. A spokesman for the RSPCA said it hoped “that it can be resolved without the need for legal proceedings”.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 584528.ece

Hannah Fletcher
She worked on their farm for 40 years; she cared for them in their old age; she uprooted her family to be near them – but it was only after they died that Christine Gill discovered that her parents had written her out of their will and left their £1.5 million estate to an animal charity. Dr Gill, 56, was left “deeply hurt and bewildered” by the disinheritance, which meant that Potto Carr Farm, near Potto, North Yorkshire, was bequeathed in its 287-acre entirety to the RSPCA.
“To lose the farm is like having my heart and soul ripped out,” she said. “It’s the farm that I’ve grown up on, that I’ve worked on and that I’ve arranged my life around.”
From the age of 13 and throughout her university studies, Dr Gill worked on Potto Carr, driving tractors and picking potatoes.
In 1986 she bought a house next to Potto Carr, with her husband, Andrew Baczkowski, so that she could be close to her parents and combine her work in the department of statistics at the University of Leeds with work on their farm.
“As a daughter, I could not have done more,” Dr Gill said yesterday. But, she said, she now felt as if she had “been used as a dogsbody”.
“We worked on the farm because we were part of the family and we were helping the farm to survive – and because one day we expected we would pass the farm on to the next generation.”
Now, it is Dr Gill’s ten-year-old son, Christopher, who “loses out”.
“He’s mad about farming,” said Dr Gill, as she described a living-room floor divided into pretend fields. “He even has a crop rotation schedule. It’s heartbreaking to watch him and know that his fields are under such a threat.
“My parents had plenty of scope to make a substantial donation to charity without disinheriting me so completely that nothing was to be left to me, not even any family mementos.”
Last Friday the contents of the farmhouse, including antiques, family photos and even a teddy bear that Dr Gill made for her mother as a child were “auctioned off for a pittance”.
“I watched the destruction of my family history,” said Dr Gill. “I watched lot after lot go under the hammer – £1 here, £2 there.” The proceeds went to the RSPCA.
Her parents’ bequest to the RSPCA has rankled with Dr Gill all the more, she says, because her parents, both advocates of hunting, never had anything to do with the charity, and “never wrote a cheque to the RSPCA”.
Dr Gill’s father, John, died in 1999, leaving Dr Gill, an only child, to care for her mother, Joyce, who suffered from severe social phobia. “I cared for her; I shopped for her; I drove her; I bought her clothes; I took them back if she didn’t like them,” Dr Gill said.
Mrs Gill died in August 2006 and it was then that Dr Gill saw her parents’ wills. The “mirror wills” were identical and left everything to each other, and then, once they had both died, to the RSPCA.
Dr Gill said that a possible motive for the disinheritance was that her parents did not like her half-Polish husband. But, she said: “He’s never been to Poland. He doesn’t speak Polish. And he looks like a Yorkshireman to me.” Dr Gill also suggested that her father could have had a “bee in his bonnet” about not having a son when he drew up his will. By the time his grandson, Christopher, was born, he was 80 and simply forgot or didn’t bother to change it.
Dr Gill is now having court papers drawn up to challenge the wills under the 1975 Inheritance Act and must lodge them by October 15. She has also been trying to negotiate with the RSPCA but said yesterday that it had treated her “ruthlessly”. A spokesman for the RSPCA said it hoped “that it can be resolved without the need for legal proceedings”.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 584528.ece