Man sells £200,000 stamp collection to cleaner for £1 and cuts kids out of will

An elderly stamp collector is at the centre of a bitter legal row after he sold his £200,000 collection to his cleaner for a pound and left her the majority of his wealthy estate.

Ray Watts had previously wanted to split his estate among his family but changed his will two years before his death in 2021 and cut them out of it.

Instead, the 90-year-old named Sue Pope, his cleaner and informal carer, and the inheritant to his £250,000 estate and prized stamp collection.

But Mrs Pope – who says she was far more than a cleaner and carer to her friend Mr Watts -has fired back, and claimed he did want to cut out his ‘disrespectful’ step-daughter after she changed the locks at his home when he was in hospital.

Judge Nigel Gerald was told that Mr Watts had three children – Nicholas and Lesley Watts and Deborah Humphreys – by his first wife, Madeline Watts, before she died in 1995.

He went on to remarry, taking Fay Watts as his second wife in 1998, with her children, Mrs Neate and sons Mark and Sean Brennan, becoming his stepkids.. She died in 2011.

Mr Watts had been a clerk at Lloyds Bank during his working life, but in retirement devoted himself to philately, attending fairs and dealing in stamps.

Valued at up to £200,000 by Mrs Neate, his stock included stamps dating back as far as the 1840s.

Mrs Pope came into Mr Watts’ life after he placed an advertisement for a cleaner, but gradually she took on more and more duties until she was caring for him too.

Under a will written in 2007, Mr Watts had intended to leave his estate, including his share of the family home in Great Waldingfield, near Sudbury, Suffolk, to his six children and stepchildren equally.

But a new will was made in 2019 after he had been admitted to hospital following a serious fall at home, following which he had lain undiscovered for hours.

The will left £15,000 to each of his three children and Mrs Neate, with the rest of an estate valued at about £250,000 going to Mrs Pope.

However, he then executed a codocil, a document altering the effect of a will, in 2020, slashing Mrs Neate’s share to a ‘deliberately derisory’ legacy of a single pound, the court heard.

Challenging the validity of the will and codicil, Mrs Neate’s lawyers claim that Mrs Pope cannot show that the ailing pensioner had ‘knowledge and approval’ of its contents, legal language meaning they represented his ‘testamentary intentions.’

Her barrister Nathan Wells said Mr Watts had been described in hospital as ‘confused with a reduced level of consciousness’ and that there had been a ‘slowing of his thinking.’

There was also evidence of ‘significant’ involvement of Mrs Pope in the making of the will, she having contacted the solicitors to attend to Mr Watts in hospital, he said.

Mrs Neate claimed to have had a ‘good relationship’ with her stepdad, adding: ‘I cannot reconcile the instructions behind that codicil with the Ray that I had known for so many years.’

Her barrister said there had been continued contact between the two of them, with Mrs Neate providing assistance with medical appointments, while Mr Watts would spend Christmas with her and her husband.

For Mrs Pope, barrister Elis Gomer told the judge that she is not being accused of ‘undue influence,’ but simply being required by Mrs Neate to prove that the will and codicil reflected Mr Watts’ ‘true wishes.’

But he insisted the step-daughter’s challenge was based on a ‘rather nebulous jumble of allegations’ and that the will and codicil were perfectly valid.

He insisted that Mr Watts wanted Mrs Pope to benefit from his 2019 will and had gone on to further slash his step-daughter’s inheritance to £1 because of her ‘disrespectful’ actions in having changed the locks on his home when he was in hospital.

‘Mrs Pope’s position is simply that the 2019 will arose out of a desire to benefit Mrs Pope.

‘The 2020 codicil came about as a result of the deceased’s view that Mrs Neate’s behaviour towards the end of his life was – to use the deceased’s words – “disrespectful and distressing”, to the point that he no longer wished to make any meaningful provision for Mrs Neate.’

He said Mrs Pope’s account had been corroborated by Mr Watts’ three biological children, with Nicholas Watts saying his dad considered he had given the three children enough during his lifetime.

He also criticised Mrs Neate’s continual reference to Mrs Pope as a ‘cleaner’ in case documents, when despite beginning as a paid cleaner, she had gone on to become much more involved in his life.

‘Mrs Neate’s antipathy towards Mrs Pope in these proceedings is palpable,’ Mr Gomer told the judge.

‘She has clearly become convinced that the terms of the 2019 will and the 2020 codicil are “suspicious” and that there is evidence to suggest that something has “gone wrong” in their creation.

‘It is submitted that the objective evidence simply does not support that position and….that the deceased knew and approved the terms of the 2019 will and the 2020 codicil.’

On top of her £200,000 share of Mr Watts’ estate Mrs Pope also got his stamp collection for a nominal sum. However she says it was worth no more than £40,000 rather than £200,000.

The case continues.