Alpaca, donkey and bear charities contest £2m will

The £1.9m will of a llama-loving pensioner has caused a High Court fight that saw rival alpaca, donkey and bear enthusiasts scrapping over her money.

- PAUL KEOGH

Conservationist Candia Midworth was a passionate animal-lover, who kept and bred llamas at her Surrey farm. She was a director of the British Llama and Alpaca Association and editor of its magazine, the Camelids Chronicle.

She was widowed decades ago, and when she died in 2022 she left a will dividing her £1.9m fortune equally between six charities supporting different animals around the world.

But the will ended up at the centre of a High Court battle after British Camelids Ltd, the charitable arm of the British Llama and Alpaca Association, claimed half of the money for itself.

Because three of the causes named in Midworth’s will no longer exist in the exact form she stated, while another doesn’t exist at all, the gifts to them should fail, the llama charity claimed.

However, after a trial at the London court, a judge, Master Katherine McQuail, has now made an order that the money be used for the benefit of donkeys, mules and bears as well as llamas and alpacas.

Among others, £300,000-plus shares will go to World Animal Protection for its work with captive bears; to the Brooke Hospital for Animals for its support of working horses, mules and donkeys; and towards zoo watchdog work at the Born Free Foundation.

Giving her judgment, the judge said the will should be construed as providing for gifts to be made in respect of the “charitable purposes” of the causes Midworth stipulated, and that just because the specific entities she named no longer exist in the same form, it does not mean the gifts should fail.

The court heard that Midworth, whose husband Julian died in 1996, kept and bred llamas at her farm, Banks Way House, in Effingham, Surrey, from at least the mid-1980s.