A widow is facing a court bill in the hundreds of thousands after losing a battle against her husband’s first wife and his children for his ice cream fortune.
The multi million pound estate was left to the deceased’s second wife. His first wife and children successfully challenged this and an agreement drawn up in 2016, to leave shares of the business to his children, was upheld.
Now the Court has decided the matter of costs. The general rule, though there are a variety of outcomes in this type of litigation, is that the loser pays the winner’s costs. This was no different, and Ms Collici has been ordered to pay £313,000 of her opposition’s legal fees (which were in fact £389,000). In addition to this she will have had her own costs to pay of course.
Whilst the estate was £4.75m, these are nonetheless eye watering sums, and for this reason, legal teams usually encourage their clients to pursue alternative dispute resolution in the form of mediation, rather than going to Trial at enormous expense.
Occasionally a party will refuse to engage – but it can be seen that this is at their own risk!
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Read more about this dispute in The Daily Mail:
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