Brothers embroiled in fight for 14 million pound inheritance
When Stuart Marcus died in 2020, aged 86, he left his multi-million-pound toy and board game empire in a family trust. Three years later, the family would be at war over who was rightfully a beneficiary of the trust.
Husband and wife Stuart and Patricia raised two sons together – Edward and Jonathan. Stuart believed right up until his death in 2020 that Edward, the older of the two boys, was his biological son. However, Edward was actually the result of an affair that the boys’ mother had without the toy tycoon’s knowledge.
On discovering that his older sibling was not actually Stuart’s biological son, younger brother Jonathan sought to have his brother removed as a beneficiary of the family trust. A case at the High Court ensued, where both evidence given by their mother Patricia and the results of a DNA test concluded that Edward was not the biological son of Stuart Marcus and that he and Jonathan were half-brothers.
The judge went on to rule that Stuart’s trust was to benefit both Edward and Jonathan, whether they were his biological sons or not. The judge concluded that, when mentioning “children” as beneficiaries of the trust, that the intention of this word was ‘to be understood as meaning Edward and Jonathan’.
Jonathan now must pay 35% of older brother Edwards lawyers’ bills, excluding a success fee element, amounting to around £60,000 in total plus his own legal costs which are unknown. Edward is left with the rest of the £208,000 bill to pay himself.