Legal applications over will of doctor and broadcaster, Austin Darragh, heard in High Court
Two children of well-known doctor, Professor Austin Darragh, were told after his death there was no money in their father's estate to bury him, the High Court has heard.
Prof Darragh, a highly successful businessman, medical doctor, broadcaster, writer and equestrian enthusiast who was at one time targeted by kidnappers, died in October 2015 at the age of 88.
In a will executed in 2011, he left his entire estate to his second wife of 17 years, Anna Darragh (74) of Tara, Co Meath.
David and Adrienne Darragh, two of Prof. Darragh's four surviving children from his first marriage to Terry, who died in 1992, claim their father, among other things, may not have had capacity to make the 2011 will and may have been subjected to undue influence.
They want court orders directing their step-mother to produce testamentary papers in order to prove the will.
They also want an account provided about certain assets including what had happened to more than €7m from the 2006 sale of land at the rear of the former Darragh home on the Brennanstown Road in Foxrock, Dublin.
If this is not done, they want an independent administrator over the estate appointed.
Mrs Darragh denies their claims.
In a separate application, she seeks dismissal of their case on grounds including they have no legal standing to challenge the will and have shown no reasonable cause of action.
In a joint affidavit, David Darragh, who lives in Old Bray Road, Shankill, Co Dublin, and Adrienne Darragh, of Bettystown, Co Meath, said their father had assisted both of them in business ventures during his lifetime. In pre-2011 testamentary arrangements, about which he spoke to his housekeeper, he said he had provided for his own children.
After the 2011 will, Mrs Darragh "increasingly antagonised the deceased's children". In 2012 she banished Adrienne from an annex attached to the large Tarabeg Estate, Tara, Co Meath, where the couple lived.
Mrs Darragh frustrated efforts by David to finalise agreements relating to patents held jointly by him and his father and used by their company Darragh Equestrian Solutions, they said.
After the funeral in October 2015, Prof Darragh's children by his first marriage were not invited back to the house while Mrs Darragh's own two children were.
"The deceased's adult children were also told, bafflingly, there was 'no money to pay for the funeral'". A year later, the funeral directors advised they remained unpaid, the siblings said.
Mrs Darragh's eldest son, Colm McDonnell, told his step brother and sister there "was no money in your father's estate to bury him.....the bank accounts are emptied".
Three weeks after the funeral, David first received a copy of the 2011 will from Colm McDonnell, Mrs Darragh's eldest son. He was also given a single page document on the distribution of the proceeds from the sale of the Foxrock lands
This document could never represent a true and fair account" of the proceeds of the sale, they said.
Colm McDonnell, a chartered accountant in a large Dublin firm, also told David to "stay away" from solicitors or there would be "a reckoning" with the taxman, they said. This claim is strongly denied by Mrs Darragh's lawyers.
They said they are also coerced to conclude Mrs Darragh had planned and contrived to use their father's monies to bail out her former husband, Angus McDonnell, a managing partner in the insolvent Bloxham stockbrokers, as well as their two sons.
Brian Spierin SC, instructed by Crowley Millar Solicitors, for Mrs Darragh, said his client had been unable to have the will proved because the two children had entered caveats which prevents a grant of probate. They were "fishing for information" by taking their proceedings, he said.
They had also maintained a fiction that there were mutual wills created between Prof Darragh and his wife. They had not produced any evidence to back up their undue influence and lack of capacity claims, he said
Eanna Mulloy SC, instructed by Fabian Cadden Solicitors, said his clients had been "fobbed off" and there was a shiftiness in the responses to the most basic of inquiries.
Mr Mulloy said his clients were entitled to the information they sought as part of pre-trial discovery but what was happening was an attempt to cut out their access to the courts. Mrs Darragh had not met the burden of proof entitling her to a strike out the proceedings.
Mr Justice Denis McDonald reserved his decision.
