Three brothers are fighting their tennis coach sister in court for a FOURTH time

Three brothers are fighting their tennis coach sister in court for a fourth time over claims their ‘aggressive and bullying’ sibling ‘poisoned’ their mother’s mind so they were cut out of her £1million will.

David, Nino and Remo Rea have been feuding with their 59-year-old sister Rita for seven years after their mother, Anna, left nearly all her fortune to her daughter in 2016 – claiming that her sons had ‘abandoned’ her.

The brothers are asking a High Court judge to nullify Anna’s last will, drawn up in 2015, which left Rita her main asset in the form of the family home in Tooting Bec, where properties routinely change hands for £1million.

Instead they want the judge to rule in favour of Anna’s previous 1986 will, which split her estate equally between all her four children.

Their barrister, Graeme Wood, claims the siblings’ parent ‘lacked testamentary capacity’, did not fully understand the will she signed off, and that ‘aggressive and bullying’ Rita ‘exerted undue influence’ over her frail and ageing mother.

But Rita insists she had nothing to do with making the will and that Anna, despite her age, was a feisty figure who knew her own mind and would never have changed her will under pressure.

The case has already been fought once in the High Court, with Rita winning in 2019, before two appeals ultimately resulted in the judgment being overturned and a fresh trial ordered last year.

The fight is now before a court for a fourth time, with Judge David Hodge KC set to rule again after a fresh week-long trial at the High Court in London.

The court heard Anna, who emigrated to the UK from Italy after World War Two, died aged 86 in 2016, leaving her daughter almost everything, with her three sons left only minimal legacies, soon eaten up by funeral expenses.

In her last testament, she declared that Rita, who had moved in to care for her in 2009, deserved to inherit her home because ‘she has taken care of me all these years’.

She stated: ‘My sons do not help me with their care and there has been numerous calls for help from me but they are not engaging with any help or assistance.

‘My sons have not taken care of me and my daughter Rita has been my sole carer for many years.

‘Hence should any of my sons challenge my estate, I wish my executors to defend any such claim as they are not dependent on me and I do not wish for them to share in my estate, save for what I have stated in this will.’

But the trio claim the 2015 will was invalid and should be struck out by the judge, because Rita planted the false idea in her mother’s mind that her boys had ‘abandoned’ her and pressured Anna to change her will.

The brothers’ barrister Mr Wood told the judge that they had given her extensive help over the years and that the letter she left did not reflect the truth.

He said the brothers would show the judge ‘evidence… showing Rita dealing with Anna in an aggressive and bullying manner.

‘The defendants will rely on text messages which demonstrate that Rita is capable of oppressive and threatening language and who has a forceful personality,’ he said.

‘It is inherently unlikely Rita would have adopted a different persona when in the company of Anna.’

However, in the witness box at the new trial, Rita said she had ‘no involvement in how her mother distributed her estate’.

Overall, she insists her mother was a ‘strong-minded person who knew her own mind’ and says she shouldered the burden of caring for her after returning to live with her in 2009.

She told the judge: ‘I had no involvement in how my mother distributed her estate and no conversations with my mother about how she changed her will.

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‘I had no discussions with my mother and had absolutely no involvement with my mother in discussions about her making a new will.’

Mr Wood however argued that Rita had skewed the picture of how Anna was cared for in her last years, highlighting evidence which he said proved that the brothers ‘showed concern for Anna and her needs throughout the relevant period’.

This included Remo living with and caring for Anna between 2001 and 2009 and David carrying out and funding extensive maintenance works throughout her house.

‘A rota was agreed between Rita, David and Nino that they would care for Anna for September – December 2015,’ said their barrister.

‘David looked after Anna until 7th November 2015, just ten days before instructions were given to the solicitor, and when according to Rita’s evidence, Anna told her she wished to change her will.’

He said that in June 2015 Rita also threatened to change the locks on their mother’s home, and claimed she deliberately kept Anna’s change of will a secret from the three brothers.

The sons’ barrister argued there was no clear reason for Anna to cut her sons out of her will, and claimed that keeping her will change secret from them was ‘inconsistent with her character’.

‘It appears a conscious and calculated decision was made by Rita to secrete the changes her mother had made to the will and to prevent the defendants having knowledge of this until after Anna’s death.

‘The question arises, why did Anna not inform them?

‘Why would she want to leave this as a legacy? That her last act on earth was to be involved in a deceit of her sons doesn’t make sense.

‘We say a more probable explanation was that Rita decided the will change would not be communicated and kept secret, because, as David said, it was Rita who was in control in [the house].’

The barrister claimed that Anna was physically and mentally frail with hearing problems and issues understanding English when the will was made.

‘Anna would have been vulnerable to having her mind poisoned by Rita to believe that her sons had not cared for her,’ he said.

‘The defendant invites the court to accept that at all relevant times Anna came within the definition of a vulnerable person.’

The case first got under way in 2017 and has already crawled through three separate sets of court proceedings, climaxing in a February 2022 Appeal Court ruling by Lord Justice Lewison, who lamented the legal costs haemorrhaged while fighting the dispute, but said there needed to be a retrial.

At the first High Court trial back in 2019, the brothers presented their own case, with motorbike race manager David Rea spearheading their challenge and cross-examining his sister, who he claimed had ‘hit the jackpot’ in inheriting the family home.

At the end of that trial, Master Jonathan Arkush rejected the brothers’ case and upheld the 2015 will, leaving Rita to inherit her mother’s estate.

But the case then went back to the High Court, with the brothers’ barrister Robin Howard arguing that the decision should be overturned due to the way it was handled by the judge.

He claimed the brothers, questioning Rita themselves as they had no lawyers at the time, had been ‘put off their stroke’ by interventions of Master Arkush, who had ‘lost patience’ with them, leaving them to think they were up against a ‘grumpy’ judge.

That challenge ended in defeat for the brothers in January 2021, but Lord Justice Lewison ruled in their favour at the Court of Appeal in February 2022 and directed a fresh trial.

He said the original trial process was flawed, because the three brothers had insufficient chance to question Rita on key elements of her evidence.

However, he also warned the siblings that the court feud risks destroying their inheritance through lawyers’ bills, which are already estimated at some £150,000 on Rita’s side alone.

‘The outcome is a tragedy for the whole family. The tangible benefits deriving from the relatively modest estate will have been seriously depleted by the costs of the original trial and the appeal,’ he said.

‘A further trial may well exhaust them completely.’

Judgment in the latest clash is expected to be delivered later this month.