Estranged Daughter Loses Claim Under the Inheritance Act 1975

A failed inheritance dispute has resulted in a costs order for £126,000 after an “estranged” daughter unsuccessfully sued for a share of her late father’s estate.

Sarah Ducent’s father Herbert Ducent died in 2007, leaving his UK estate worth around £900,000 and a business and property in Jamaica, to his widow Dorothy, in a will drawn up in Jamaica.

Last year, Sarah – who shared her father with at least five half-siblings, including British-Jamaican vocalist Rickardo ‘Rik Rok’ Ducent, who co-wrote and sang on Shaggy’s 2001 hit ‘It Wasn’t Me’ – went to court in a bid to secure “reasonable provision” from her father’s estate, claiming she is now living “on the breadline”.

To claim part of her father’s fortune in the British courts, Sarah had to establish that Herbert’s legal permanent home was in London, rather than Jamaica.

In deciding whether English courts had jurisdiction to deal with the claim, Judge Jane Evans-Gordon found that after marrying Dorothy, Herbert also fathered a second child with a Jamaican woman in 1978 and went on to father at least three more with other women in Jamaica.

Herbert had moved the family to Jamaica in 1983, with Dorothy moving back to London in 1996, after which Herbert never visited England again.

Dismissing Sarah’s claim at Central London County Court last year, the judge concluded: “I am satisfied that Herbert was domiciled in Jamaica at his date of death.”

In court again last week, Sarah challenged the making of the costs order, under which she has to pay £126,000 to cover Dorothy’s legal bills, describing the sum as “excessive.”

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