The bitter squabble between Lord Lambton’s children over their individual shares of his inheritance has brought the clichés around probate and wills out into the open, dusted them down and given them a glamorous makeover. The case not only highlights the goings on within the aristocracy, but also shines a light on the way a tactical choice of jurisdiction can help parties involved in high value disputes to achieve their aims.

Following Lord Lambton’s retirement from political life as a result of his debauched ways, he moved to Italy to live out his remaining three decades of luxurious lifestyle in a palatial villa worth £12 million. Lord Lambton’s will declared that all assets should be left to his son, omitting his five daughters from the equation entirely. Three of his daughters have issued proceedings in Italy, where inheritance rules differ from the UK. There has been furious debate in the UK court as to whether the estate should be subject to Italian law, under which the daughters would each receive a share. Ned, the son and heir, has issued proceedings in the UK seeking to have the dispute resolved here.

Advantage of foreign jurisdictions

Individuals will often seek to use foreign jurisdictions to their advantage – take the attempt made by the defendants in Morris v. Davis to utilise the Belgian courts to achieve their ends as an example. In this case, the deceased had held a British passport and died abroad while living in France at a time when he was estranged from his English family. The straightforward attempt by his executor to obtain a grant of probate in England had been before the English court for over a year and was about two months shy of a week-long trial on the issue of domicile, when the defendants (members of his family with whom the deceased had fallen out) issued proceedings in Belgium seeking summary judgment about ten days prior to the English trial.

There are two potential benefits to this approach.  In Belgium, the formal requirements for a will are much more demanding than in the UK and they hoped that the Belgian Court would declare the will invalid.  Further, the Belgian inheritance laws are such that a significant portion of the estate would pass to the family defendants.  The judge, Mrs. Justice Asplin, however, granted an anti-suit injunction to prevent the family from pursuing the Belgian claim until after the domicile trial (which the family defendants subsequently lost). 

UK courts preferred to other European jurisdictions

There is increasing evidence to suggest that the UK courts are being used for Europe-based cases in preference to other European jurisdictions. The critical factors for clients are to ascertain rapidly which jurisdictions might be relevant; what the advantages of each might be to any interested party and how to ensure that the dispute is heard by the court of the client’s choice.  As Ned Lambton has noted, there are many advantages in the UK courts, not least the speed with which disputes can be resolved together with the quality of the judicial minds that will reach the decision needed. 

Proceedings in Italy are notorious for being slow and expensive, with the Lambton case estimated to go on for fifteen to twenty years before any decision is finalised.. Over the past five decades, the modern day lifestyle amongst the wealthy has inevitably meant easy travel across borders, the acquisition of various overseas properties and the accumulation of valuable assets that are then tricky to disperse fairly amongst those family members left behind after a death. This then sparks a rise in the number of disputes being litigated worldwide revolving around ownership of foreign property and assets. With no uniformity uniting the various court systems across the globe, it is perhaps not surprising that the tactic of pursing the jurisdiction that can give the most favourable result is often perceived as winning half of the battle.

Ed Rowntree is a  barrister at Hardwicke Chambers