Brothers in titanic court battle over parents' estate

A tale of greed and deceit involving two brothers fighting over the estate of their late parents who were wealthy farmers unfolded in the high court in Pretoria.

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Pretoria - A tale of greed and deceit involving two brothers embroiled in a titanic legal battle. This is what unfolded in the high court in Pretoria on Monday.

They are fighting over the estate of their late parents who were wealthy farmers.

“The dispute between the Penwill brothers - Richard and Andrew - is embedded in rivalry, jealousy, greed and hatred,” Judge FHD van Oosten said in his judgment, which reads like a movie script. The bounty is a string of farms in the Tzaneen area and Bredasdorp district in the Western Cape worth millions.

Douglas Penwill and his wife Pat moved to South Africa from Kenya in 1963 and founded Sapekoe Tea Estates in Tzaneen. They were married for 54 years before Douglas died in the early 2000s, followed by his wife in 2012.

They had two sons, Richard, a lawyer and former diplomat who lived in England with his wife and three children, and Andrew, a retired businessman and stockbroker, who is unmarried and lived in Joburg.

Pat lived on the family estate Grey Mists, in Haenertsburg in Limpopo for most of her life. She was deep in her eighties when she died.

The family millions were in the Beverly Trust, established earlier by Douglas.

Richard said the animosity between him and his brother started around 2003. “This kind of rivalry is not uncommon to human nature in the context of heritable expectations and disputes,” the judge said in citing an Afrikaans song, which describes how families stood by the graves of their loved ones, crying and praising God. But things later turn sour when the issue of a will is raised, as each felt they should receive more than the other.

In this case Richard, his wife and three children are all beneficiaries of the trust, as well as Andrew.

This means that Richard and his family are 5/6th beneficiaries, while Andrew’s share is 1/6th.

In 2003 Pat signed a will, in terms of which the trust would be the beneficiary of the entire estate. It emerged that with the help of a semi-retired advocate, Jennifer Wild, she revoked this will in 2006 and signed two new ones, in terms of which she ordered that the trust be dissolved and that her sons inherited equally.

The result of the latest will was that Andrew inherited much more than before. Richard disputed the last two wills and turned to court, saying his mother was suffering from dementia at the time.

Wild, who was later described by the judge as “Andrew’s lackey”, testified how a “lonely” Pat pleaded with her while they were walking around in the rose garden of Grey Mists to “stop this trust so that her boys could stop fighting”.

Wild said he simply wanted everything to be shared in equal parts. He had the papers drawn up and after the new wills were signed, rushed the elderly Pat to Joburg, so that a doctor could declare her of sound mind.

Richard was never told of this.

Judge Van Oosten found Wild exploited Pat’s vulnerability and possibly manipulated her, as the trust could not be dissolved as its directive did not provide for this. The judge frowned upon Andrew and Wild rushing the signing of the new wills and immediately afterwards taking the mother to a doctor.

But the final nail in the coffin was when it emerged that years ago, after his father died, Andrew, issued summons against the trust for R1.7 million, claiming his father’s estate owed him.

He served them on his mother. It was attached to the door of an empty Grey Mists, as his elderly mother was living with him then.

With his brother in England knowing nothing about this, no defence was noted and he took judgment against the estate. He obtained default judgment against a company owned by his father to sell its shares to recover his “debt”.

Wild took a friend along to the auction, who bought the shares for a meager R27 300.

She, in turn, sold them back to Wild, acting as Andrew’s representative. He paid R34 300 for the shares, worth R15m and became the sole shareholder. He then fired his mother and Richard as directors.

When Richard found out, he had the order overturned, resulting in the judge commenting that this was a clear scam by Andrew and “his lackey”.

Pretoria News