Bachelor’s £2.7m fortune sparks High Court DNA battle over heirs
A single multimillionaire’s fortune of more than £2million has become the subject of a High Court dispute involving heir hunters, DNA testing and an investigation into her father’s “romantic life”.
McDonald Noel, who emigrated to London from Trinidad in 1960, died a wealthy man in 2018 at the age of 84.
He left behind an estate worth £2.7 million, including a £1.5 million Kensington house.
Having no children, no spouse, and no will, his millions were transferred to the state’s coffers until heir hunters intervened.
They identified potential relatives in the UK and the Caribbean, but a bitter dispute has since emerged between them over who was the deceased’s actual blood relative.
Now, armed with the results of DNA tests, a Supreme Court judge is being asked to conduct a rare legal “kinship inquiry” and decide who will inherit.
Judge Master Katherine McQuail heard McDonald Noel, a shopkeeper and property tycoon, died before probate in London in April 2018.
The potential size of his estate has attracted interest from heir hunters who have searched Mr Noel’s family tree in the UK and the Caribbean, searching for his closest living relatives but finding a tangled web of genealogy.
Mr. Noel was born in Trinidad in 1934 to father Stanley Dorant and mother Neutrice Dorant; Neutrice already had another child, Stella, born last year.
Originally from Barbados, Stanley had another son, Francis, with Barbadian Clementina Forde, whom he married in 1939 after she joined him in Trinidad following Neutrice’s death in 1938.
Clementina already had two sons, Clyde and St Clair, when she moved to Stanley and married, and their grandchildren now claim that Stanley was also their father, fathering them during their visits to Barbados or before he left.
Francis’ son Shaka is now demanding a share of the millions; Stella’s son, Gerard Burton, also says he should potentially receive the share if the court is convinced that his mother, Stella, is Stanley’s child, making her McDonald’s full sister rather than his half-sister.
But St Clair’s children, represented by his daughter Desiree Dorant, and Clyde’s grandchildren, represented by his grandson Tyler Dorant, insist that they, too, are descendants of Stanley and should share in the McDonald’s fortune.
Daniel Burton, on behalf of Desiree and her siblings, told the judge: “It is the romantic life of McDonald’s father, Stanley, that is at the heart of the genealogical questions that arise in this case.”
Stanley was born in Barbados in 1906 and died in Trinidad in 1968.
Documentary records show that she traveled between Trinidad and Barbados and had children on each island.
“The questions before the court at this hearing are how many children Stanley fathered, who he was with, and who they were.”
It was a firm of inheritance hunters called the Hoopers that began identifying possible beneficiaries of McDonald’s estate.
“The outcome will determine whether Gerard is the sole beneficiary of the McDonald’s estate or whether other branches of the family (Shaka, Desiree and Tyler) will be considered beneficiaries along with Gerard under the rules of intestacy.”
He told the judge that documentary evidence showed Stanley and Clementina were from the same area and knew each other before they left Barbados for Trinidad.
“The court is invited to conclude that Clementina’s initial relationship with Stanley in Barbados resulted in the birth of Clyde,” he said, adding that a historic ship manifest showed Stanley visited Barbados seven months before St Clair’s birth.
“There is compelling evidence that Stanley is St Clair’s father. This is documentary evidence, witness evidence and DNA evidence,” he added, claiming that together this evidence “disproves Shaka’s (Clementina) insinuation that she would have two children with a different partner or partners, then immediately marry Stanley and thus pass off the children as her own.”
He told the judge: “Simply put, Clementina was not that type of person and was trying to be a good role model for her children. She had an affair and after giving birth to her first two children, she married the man named Stanley.”
“There is no other credible hypothesis that St Clair’s father was anyone other than Stanley.”
“The court is invited to find or direct evidence regarding the distribution of McDonald’s estate on the basis that Stanley was the father of McDonald, Clyde, St Clair and Francis.”
Aidan Briggs, on behalf of Francis’ son Shaka, urged the judge to take a different view.
“There are only two children named as Stanley Dorant’s father on the birth certificate; McDonald and Francis,” he said.
“Although it is possible that Stanley fathered other children, the evidence is equally consistent with him being treated as the ‘father’ after his marriage to Clementina, or being ‘claimed’ as the father by Stella.
“He said the judge should have been careful about admitting evidence about Clyde and St Clair’s beliefs about their ancestry, saying: “A child clearly has no knowledge of its own conception.”
He told the judge that even if Stanley fathered all the children, it should not be assumed that they were his.
He said Stanley lived in a society where extramarital affairs were common and there was a “tendency for mothers to attribute paternity to men, especially for financial reasons”; “This is called ‘giving a man a coat’ in the British Caribbean.”
“It’s important not to apply middle-class British norms to a Caribbean setting,” he said.
“The court should not fall into the trap of assuming that a person will act in a certain way because there would be a stigma attached to a child out of wedlock in England at the same time.”
He added: “The DNA evidence supports the claims of Stella and Francis and should encourage the court to challenge the claims of Clyde and St Clair.
“The court must be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that Stanley had another child. The plaintiff’s (Shaka’s) contention is that the court cannot be more satisfied with the evidence adduced.”
The judge will give his decision on the case later.
