‘It’s like King Lear’: Daughter fights mum and siblings in High Court in inheritance row

An accountant who quit her job to take on the family’s glamping business is suing her mother in an inheritance row. Angela Heyes, 48, and engineer husband Neil, 46, claim they left their high-flying lives in Surrey behind in 2014 to move to Cornwall on the promise that they would inherit Mrs Heyes’s parents’ farm, which doubles up as a glamping business with on-site yurt. But following the death of her dad Patrick Holt, a pilot, in 2020, the couple are now fighting a High Court battle with her mother, Sarah Holt, over who owns the family holding, near Truro. The couple claim they only moved to Cornwall, leaving behind their good jobs and lives in the South East, on the back of promises by both of Angela’s parents that they would inherit the farm. But Mrs Holt – backed by her other children – is fighting the claim in a battle that could cost the family about £1 million in lawyers’ bills. The unusual family feud was compared to Shakespeare’s King Lear by Judge Paul Matthews, who told a High Court pre-trial hearing: “The proceedings are between a daughter and her husband on the one side, and her mother...

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