Hotelier worth £25 million leaves husband £150 000

FILE PHOTO:New two pound coins are seen at The Royal Mint, in Llantrisant

FILE PHOTO:New two pound coins are seen at The Royal Mint, in Llantrisant

Published Feb 18, 2017

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London - A "miserly" hotelier worth £25 million when she died left only £150 000 to her husband of 40 years, a court heard.

Pauline Milbour, 73, gave 99 per cent of her wealth to her daughter from a previous marriage.

But after the death of her husband Leonard Milbour – who got just 0.6 per cent of her estate – his family are fighting for a bigger share.

Mrs Milbour’s step-daughter Laurel Roberts, 61, and step-granddaughter Francesca Milbour, 27, received nothing in her will.

The court heard neither her husband nor his children were left any share of the family’s £9 million home in London’s exclusive Bayswater.

Mr Milbour lived just nine months after his wife’s death in 2014, and learned only shortly before he passed away that she had left nothing to his children. Now Mrs Roberts and beauty company manager Miss Milbour, her niece, are arguing in London’s High Court that they should receive some of the fortune.

They say that had Mr Milbour not died so soon after his wife, he could have successfully claimed reasonable provision from her estate.

Had the marriage ended in divorce, rather than at Mrs Milbour’s death, her husband would have been entitled to up to half her estate, the court heard.

But in a preliminary ruling yesterday, Judge Simon Monty QC said that any claim the late husband may have had against his wife’s wealth died with him.

Mrs Milbour ‘hated’ her step-daughter and ‘never regarded her as a child of the family’, the hearing was told.

There was said to have been ‘teenage step-daughter and step-mother friction’.

In Mrs Milbour’s 1993 will, the vast bulk of her estate, including the family’s 100-room Victorian hotel near Hyde Park, passed to her 51-year-old daughter Luanne Fresco.

Alexander Learmonth, representing Mrs Roberts and Miss Milbour, told the judge: ‘Despite her great wealth and the length of her marriage to Mr Milbour, her will left her husband only £150,000.

‘Even in the 1990s, when interest rates were higher, this was miserly.’

Regarding her decision to leave nothing to her step-family, Mrs Milbour wrote in a letter that her husband had left the bulk of his estate to Mrs Roberts and his son Laurence, who is Miss Milbour’s father.

She said this was ‘sufficient to ensure they were properly maintained’.

But her husband left only £320 000 to Mrs Roberts and Miss Milbour, which included the £150 000 his wife had left him, and both are now said to be broke.

The women are bringing a claim for ‘reasonable financial provision’ from Mrs Milbour’s estate.

Mr Learmonth said: ‘Laurel claims as a step-child. Francesca claims as a dependant. Both are impecunious.’

He added: ‘Mrs Fresco denies Laurel was treated as a child of the marriage by Mrs Milbour on the ground the relationship between step-mother and step-daughter was not always a happy one.’

Mrs Roberts claims she should have a share of the Bayswater property held in a trust outside Mrs Milbour’s estate. Judge Monty allowed the case to proceed to trial. 

Mark Baxter, representing Mrs Fresco, said: ‘Laurel is not the child of the marriage between Leonard and Pauline Milbour. She is a child of the marriage between Leonard and her own natural mother.’

The judge said Mrs Roberts had ‘a real prospect of success’ in proving that she was treated by her father as child of his second marriage as well as his first.

No date has yet been set for the full High Court hearing of the claims.

DAILY MAIL

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