Will row after brain tumour "turned husband into a transvestite"

A retired widow who says a brain tumour turned her late husband into a transvestite has launched a £500,000 High Court battle against his decision to cut her out of his will. Olga Smith, 61, a Russian academic, says her late husband Thomas Smith was not of sound mind when he replaced a 1992 will - which left her almost the whole of his £525,000 estate - with a 2005 will in which she got nothing.

Following Mr Smith’s death in July 2009, aged 70, a post-mortem revealed that he had been suffering from a neuroblastoma brain tumour. Mrs Smith now claims that “strange behaviour” on Mr Smith’s part - including an obsession with wearing her underwear - at the time he made the 2005 will, was a sign that his faculties had been addled by the tumour, rendering the will invalid. However, members of the late Mr Smith’s family, who now stand to benefit from the 2005 will, insist he knew exactly what he was doing when the document was drawn up.



They claim Mrs Smith was in fact cut out of the will because their marriage was effectively over and she “never used a broom, never cooked a meal, not even a cup of tea” for her husband. The widow, who told the judge she is surviving on a state pension of £131.99 a week, applied to the court for a £25,000 interim payment from the estate to meet her living expenses, debts and legal fees, until the conclusion of the case.

She also asked for an order that she be allowed to live in the former matrimonial home at least until the court’s final judgement has been delivered. Both those applications were refused however, with the judge finding that she “has not established that she had an immediate need” for either the cash or the right to live in the house. Mrs Smith was handed a £16,000 legal costs bill after failing in her interim applications, but the case will now go on to a full hearing at a later date, yet to be set.