BIM & Ors v MD
2014
COURT OF PROTECTION
United Kingdom
CORAM
- Senior Judge Lush
Areas of Law
- Family Law
2014
COURT OF PROTECTION
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
This case involves a contested application for the appointment of a new deputy for BIM, who has Alzheimer's. RM initially served as deputy without informing BIM's sons. After RM's incapacitation, AM and DM applied to be deputies. MD contested, flagging transparency issues and mismanagement suspicions. The court dismissed AM and DM's application, appointing professional deputies instead.
JUDGMENT
Senior Judge Lush:
This is a contested application for the appointment of a new deputy for property and affairs.
The President’s guidance on the publication of judgments, [2014] COPLR 78, requires me to publish a judgment in “any case where there is a dispute as to who should act as an attorney or a deputy.”
The guidance also provides that “anonymity in the judgment as published should not normally extend beyond protecting the privacy of adults who are the subject of the proceedings and other members of their families, unless there are compelling reasons to do so.”
In this judgment anonymity extends to:
the person who is the subject of the proceedings, BIM;
her husband, RM;
her husband’s brother and sister in law, DM and AM, who are the applicants; and
her sons, one of whom is the respondent, MD.
The family background
BIM was born in 1936 and lives in a residential care home in Essex.
She married twice. Her first husband left her in 1963 and she married her second husband, RM, in 1977.
BIM has two sons from her first marriage, both of whom live in Essex:
AD, who was born in 1958 and is a mechanical design engineer; and
MD, who was born in 1959 and works for a company which specialises in providing financial advice.
On 14 September 1994 she made her last will and testament, in which she:
appointed her husband and sons to be her executors and trustees;
gave her share of her principal residence at the time of her death to her sons in equal shares subject to occupation rights for her husband during his lifetime; and
gave her residuary estate to her husband; failing whom, to her sons.
BIM has Alzheimer’s disease, which was first diagnosed on 11 March 2007.
In 2010 her husband applied to be appointed as her deputy for property and affairs, but did not give notice of the application to BIM’s sons. The court asked him why, and on 23 July 2010 RM replied:
“I need to explain that neither I, nor as far as I am aware, my wife have seen or heard from her sons from her previous marriage, MD and AD, for many years. I cannot be sure when the last occasions were but I would think some seventeen years ago. … Both MD and AD moved from the last addresses we had for them many years ago and I have no idea of their present addresses.”
On 10 August 2010 a district judge made an order appointing RM as BIM’s deputy for property and affairs and required him to obtain and maintain security in the sum of £35,000.
The application
RM suffered a stroke