Sisters in court as house of late mum goes to the dogs

An alternative therapist is locked in a court fight after her sensitive” younger sister told her she can’t have her inheritance as she needs their mum’s 420,000 house for her and her emotional support dogs to live in.

- NEVILE AYLING

Agnes Duggan died in August 2018, aged 78, leaving her home to be split equally in her will between her three daughters, Sharon, Ann and Brenda Duggan. The house in Crawley, Sussex, where she had lived with Sharon, her youngest daughter and carer in her final years, made up almost all the value of her estate.

But now Sharon, 49, is blocking alternative therapist Brenda, 55, and oldest sister Ann, 60, from getting their share of their mum’s estate, claiming she needs to stay in the house for life with her therapeutic pets, as she is too “noise sensitive” to live in a flat.

She says that her needs and those of her two rescue dogs – which she told Central London County Court “help with her mental and emotional wellbeing” – outweigh the rights of her sisters to get the inheritance they are due and that they should only get a “small lump sum” each, which she could raise with a mortgage.

Sharon is now suing her two sisters under the 1975 Inheritance Act, claiming “reasonable provision” above her one-third share of her mum’s money on the basis that her special sensitivity and medical ailments mean she should get the whole house for life.

But Brenda, who formerly ran a bioresonance therapy company and a business providing gluten-free altar bread to food-intolerant Catholics, is fighting her claim, insisting Sharon and her pets will be fine in a one-bed flat.

Former NHS medical secretary Sharon, representing herself in court, told Judge Alan Johns KC that she should have the right to stay put in the family home in Lyndhurst Close, Southgate, Crawley, where she moved in 2014 and cared for her mum in her last dementiaplagued years.