Widowed Yvonne Sherrington, branded "a witch" after losing out in a venomous will dispute with her three step-children, was today battling to restore her good name - and multi-million-pound inheritance.
Mrs Sherrington was left with her reputation in tatters last year when High Court judge, Mr Justice Lightman, castigated her as "aggressive", "intolerant" and "unable to come to terms with the unpalatable facts" .
The judge said her multi-millionaire solicitor husband, Richard Sherrington, had himself described her to friends as "Hitler" and "a witch" and his marriage as "the biggest mistake of my life" before his death in an October 2001 road smash.
Mr Sherrington died just seven weeks after signing the will which left everything to Yvonne and nothing to his three children by his first, 28-year, marriage, Dahlia, 30, Donna, 27, and Ramon, 21, who was just 18 when his father lost his life on the M25.
In July last year, Mr Justice Lightman handed the children back their inheritance when he ruled the September 2001 will had neither been properly witnessed nor did it express their wealthy father's true wishes.
But that ruling today came under fierce attack at London's Appeal Court by Yvonne Sherrington's QC, Alan Boyle, who described the judge's decision as "absurd" and "contrary to all reasonable probability".
Describing Mr Justice Lightman's findings as "extraordinary", Mr Boyle said the will had been "duly executed" on its face and it was "simply unbelievable" and "inconceivable" that Mr Sherrington, a highly successful solicitor of 30 years' experience, would have signed it on each of its three pages without even having read it.
The briefest glance at the will's first page would have revealed the nature of the will and the possibility that Mr Sherrington did not know and approve of its contents was "so unlikely it ought not to be treated as a real one", he told Lord Justice Peter Gibson, Lord Justice Waller and Lord Justice Neuberger.
Mr Sherrington could quite rationally have concluded that his children would be adequately provided for under a pension fund and insurance policies and Mr Boyle argued there was nothing "suspicious" about the will which should have shifted the burden of proving its validity onto his widow.
However, in defending Mr Justice Lightman's ruling, the children's barrister, Elspeth Talbot Rice, pointed to the judge's words that Mr Sherrington was "in every way a family man", a man of honour who was devoted to his children despite their poor relations with his second wife.
His generosity to his offspring was "boundless" - he had remained on good terms with his first wife and his children's mother, Gloria - and the will had been greeted with universal shock by his friends and family.
Although Mr Sherrington had qualified draftsmen aplenty available to him in his own law firm, the will, said Miss Talbot Rice, had been drafted by Yvonne Sherrington's daughter, Dr Nathalie Walker, who was a "complete novice" in legal matters and whose qualifications were in plant ecology.
Arguing there was more than enough evidence to raise the judge's suspicions, the barrister said the will was said to have been witnessed by an office cleaner - whose native tongue is Gujarati and who spoke "painfully poor" English - and the wife of Mr Sherrington chauffeur.
Miss Talbot Rice said Mr Justice Lightman had been right to find Yvonne Sherrington an "unsatisfactory and unreliable witness" who was "quite unable to come to terms with the unpalatable facts and willing to say anything that comes to mind, irrespective of its truth, to contradict them."
The judge had also said of the widow: "She showed herself to be aggressive, intolerant, ready without any basis to charge anyone who gave evidence adverse to her cause with deliberate lying".
And Miss Talbot Rice told the Appeal Court there could be no viable challenge to Mr Justice Lightman's findings of fact and assessment of the evidence which he was entitled to reach.
Mr Sherrington founded the leading north London law firm which bears his name and also owned a loan business, Barex Brokers Ltd, whose loan book was valued at €8 million after his death. On top of that he had assets worth at least €1.5 million when he died in a collision with a lorry, aged just 56.
His children argued the will - signed on September 7 2001 just as their father was about to leave on holiday - as "suspicious".
But Mr Boyle told the Appeal Court some of Mr Justice Lightman's findings against the widow were "simply wrong and grossly unfair". He and his second wife had signed reciprocal wills, leaving everything to each other, and there was nothing unusual about that, he argued.
Yvonne Sherrington had suffered "great upset" at the judge's suggestion that their marriage was on the rocks when her husband died and Mr Boyle argued the judge had let his "extreme findings" on that issue "distort" his views on the validity of the will.
The Appeal Court hearing is expected to last three days.
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