Oxford professor launches legal action after being disinherited when his mother met lover half her age

An Oxford University professor has launched legal action claiming he was disinherited by his mother and lost out on her £1.25m home after she fell in love with a female lawyer half her age.

Prof Christopher Gosden said his mother Jean Weddell, a distinguished physician, had "resolved" to leave him her London home and had set up a trust in order to ensure he received the Edwardian property or the proceeds of its sale.

However, when she died in 2013, Prof Gosden, director of the Institute of Archaeology at Oxford, discovered that the home had been sold without his knowledge three years earlier and that just £5,000 remained in her estate.

Ms Weddell had changed her will after falling in love with Wendy Cook, a barrister 37 years her junior. 

The pair entered a civil partnership in 2007, when she was 78, and she had gifted much of her estate to her new partner while leaving nothing to her son, according to papers lodged at the High Court. 

Prof Gosden has lodged a writ claiming that the trust scheme his mother had set up in 2003 to minimise inheritance tax ought to have protected the house, or the money from its sale, and delivered it to him and his wife, Jane Kaye, an Oxford professor in the field of health law and policy.

Both Prof Gosden and Prof Kaye were appointed trustees of the scheme, along with Ms Weddell.

But in 2010 his mother made a new will and sold her house in Kennington, south London without her telling him.

He and his wife are suing the solicitors responsible for drawing up the trust agreement, claiming they made a mistake by leaving a loophole which allowed his mother to sell her house without his knowledge.

Prof Gosden argues that the lawyers should have advised him to take the "protective step" of registering a restriction on the sale of the house with the Land Registry, so that his mother could not dispose of it without him and his wife being informed.

But the solicitors deny being at fault, and say the Professor should have sued his own mother if he was unhappy.

Katherine McQuail, for the solicitors, says in their defence to the claim: "The claimants' remedy for any step taken by Ms Weddell in breach of contract or in breach of trust was to sue her for such breach."

She argues that it was not the lawyers' role to advise Ms Weddell on the advantages or disadvantages of the trust and states that they had not acted for, or advised, Prof Gosden and his family "in any capacity”.

The solicitors also deny that the objective of the trust was to "achieve a transfer of the property" to Prof Gosden and his family.

They acted neither negligently, nor in breach of contract, and could have taken no steps that would have prevented Ms Weddell dealing with her own property as she wished, says Ms McQuail.

Ms Weddell, who died in 2013 aged 84, was one of the first female students at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in 1947 and worked in both Korea and Jordan before carrying out groundbreaking work with stroke patients.

When Prof Gosden was born, she gave him up for adoption and he was taken to live in Australia by his adoptive family but returned to the UK and "reestablished a relationship with his mother" in 1987,  the writ states.

The case came before the High Court last week for a pre-trial review. The full trial is set to last four days and will commence later this year.

There is no claim against Ms Cook, from Newport on the Isle of Wight, who is not a party to the legal action.