Senior judges have urged people to take more care writing wills after hearing a bitter inheritance dispute between two stepbrothers.

Martin Densham-Smith and Jonathan Fry spent “a great deal of money” arguing in court over their right to a £500,000 estate.

Mr Densham-Smith claimed he was entitled to a half share of the money left by his father’s second wife. But Mr Fry, the second wife’s own son, claimed he should have all the money.

The Appeal Court upheld an earlier ruling that Mr Densham-Smith’s father, Denny, and Mr Fry’s mother, Laura, had made an oral agreement for mutual wills and the two sons should share the money equally. But Lord Justice Mummery added: “Ideally, Denny

and Laura should have gone to solicitors with instructions that led to the drafting and execution of wills recording a mutual wills agreement. Instead, an untidy situation has arisen, which has unfortunately aggravated existing ill-feeling within a family and has cost a great deal of money to sort out.” Mr Fry, 51, who was appealing against a finding at Guildford County Court, claimed that his mother, who died in 2005, had written three wills after her husband’s death 15 years earlier and that none of them has made any provision to Mr Densham-Smith.

However, Mr Fry disliked his stepfather and the dislike was mutual. The judge said that if there had been no oral mutual wills agreement it would have meant that everything left by Denny

Densham-Smith would have been left to Mr Fry, whom he barely knew and did not like – which he ruled to be an unlikely scenario. Lord Justice Mummery said: “To me the judge’s findings on what was probably agreed and done have the ring of truth.”

Daily Telegraph - Saturday December 11 2010 .

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