The High Court has ordered Terence Shaughnessy to pay his sister Helen €30,000 after finding that he negligently delayed administering their late mother’s estate. The award was for the loss in value of a half-acre site bequeathed to Helen. The court rejected her claims for losses tied to a house, an apartment in Estonia and her medical complaints.
Their mother appointed Terence sole executor in her 2004 will. She left Helen and her two sisters cash, a share in the family home and a half-acre building site each, with the sites to be agreed with Terence. He was also left a life interest in the family farmland. Their mother died in September 2007.
Terence delayed taking out a grant while seeking advice about the will, which he disliked. In August 2009, Helen and her sisters sought to have him removed as executor. After he failed to respond to a citation, the Probate Office deemed him to have renounced in September 2009. He later lodged a caveat that held up the sisters’ application to administer the estate. He withdrew his objection in June 2012, and the sisters were appointed to administer it. The judgment said cash bequests of about €20,000 each were paid, but the property transfers remained incomplete.
Justice Paul Gilligan found that Terence had failed in his duty of care to the estate and Helen. He said Terence should have renounced as executor if he was unwilling to carry out the role. The judge also found that the caveat was lodged vexatiously to prevent the sisters from obtaining the grant, despite Terence having an interest in the estate.
The court did not award Helen the €46,000 she said she lost on an Estonian apartment after her loan was foreclosed in 2008. It found that she had not shown Terence was told she risked losing the apartment, and held that the loss was not reasonably foreseeable and was too remote. It also rejected her claim over the family home, finding she had not established an identifiable loss attributable solely to Terence, given the hurdles to a sale and the sisters’ role in maintaining the property after 2012. The judge was not satisfied that her medical complaints were sufficiently linked to Terence’s conduct.
For the half-acre site, the court found that a reasonable executor should have completed the transfer within two years of their mother’s death. It assessed Helen’s loss at €30,000, comparing an estimated sale price of €50,000 to €60,000 within a reasonable period with a valuation of €25,000 in October 2012. Judgment was entered for Helen in that amount.