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Oxford don in court battle over £1.25m home mother left to female lover half her age

Dr Jean Weddell, Professor Christopher Gosden, Wendy Cook: Richard Gittins/Champion New
Dr Jean Weddell, Professor Christopher Gosden, Wendy Cook: Richard Gittins/Champion New

An Oxford professor is locked in a £1.25 million court battle after he was disinherited by his mother who fell for a female lawyer half her age.

Leading archaeologist Christopher Gosden believed his mother, distinguished physician Jean Weddell, had “resolved” to leave him her Edwardian home in London, but he was left with nothing when she died in 2013.

Ms Weddell had fallen in love in her later years with barrister Wendy Cook, 37 years her junior, and they formed a civil partnership in 2007.

She made a new will which left nothing to her son and gifted much of her estate to her Ms Cook, according to papers lodged at the High Court.

The Kennington home at the centre of the case is worth £1.25m (Richard Gittins/Champion News)
The Kennington home at the centre of the case is worth £1.25m (Richard Gittins/Champion News)

Professor Gosden, who is the director of the Institute of Archaeology at Oxford University, said it was only after his mother’s death that he discovered she had, in 2010, sold her Kennington home which is now worth £1.25 million.

He is suing solicitors who drew up a trust scheme set up by his mother in 2003 to minimise inheritance tax, claiming it should have prevented the house from being sold without his knowledge.

Ms Weddell’s medical career included helping set up a children’s hospital in Korea in the Fifties after the country’s civil war, treating youngsters with tuberculosis in Jordan, lecturing for the World Health Organisation, and carrying out ground-breaking work with stroke patients.

She was one of the first women to attend St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School in 1947, and gave her son Christopher up for adoption shortly before she left to work in Korea.

Professor Gosden, a trustee of the British Museum, “re-established a relationship with his mother” in 1987, he told the court. He claimed his mother had left her whole estate to him and his wife Jane Kaye — an Oxford professor in the field of health law and policy — in a 2003 will.

At the same time, Ms Weddell set up an “estate protection scheme”, putting her home into a trust which promised to deliver the property, or the money from its sale, into the hands of her son and his family in a tax-efficient manner.

Professor Gosden and Professor Kaye were appointed trustees of the scheme along with Ms Weddell, but the situation changed in 2010 when she sold the house and made a new will leaving most of her wealth to Ms Cook.

When the value of her estate was revealed after her death, Professor Gosden was told it amounted to less than £5,000.

He and his wife claim solicitors who drew up the trust left open a loophole which allowed his mother to sell her house without his knowledge. The solicitors argue they were not responsible for advising Ms Weddell on the advantages or disadvantages of the trust and had not acted for Professor Gosden and his family “in any capacity”.

Details of the dispute emerged at a pre-trial review last week, with a full trial set for later this year. Ms Cook is not a party to the action. Professor Gosden declined to comment.