“Her Dying Wishes” Aren’t Enough to Justify Forgery of Her Will
Catherine “Kitty” Haughey passed away in 2004, a widow without children of her own. Her godson lived with her the last two years of her life in County Armagh in Northern Ireland. She was leaving behind the lovely sounding “Annie’s Cottage” and Larkin’s, a family pub, along with a substantial sum of cash. Directions for distribution of her property were contained in a will dated two weeks before her death.
Ten years later, her godson has pled guilty to forgery of that will, although still trying to rationalize his actions by saying the new document that gave him the house and pub “reflected her dying wishes.” He was finally compelled to concede he’d gone about “changing the will in the wrong way.”
Indeed he did, with help in drafting and “witnessing” the will coming from a surveyor and a local doctor, both of whom earlier pled guilty to assisting in the forgery. They received suspended sentences.
The 53-year-old “godson,” Francis Tiernan, tried to avoid prosecution in Northern Ireland by fleeing the court’s jurisdiction and fighting extradition after he was discovered in the south of Ireland. His prison sentence is three years.
The actual will, dated 2003, had left Tiernan just £1000, while the reported value of the property was more than £1,000,000. An autopsy was performed following exhumation of Kitty Haughey’s body, showing she died of natural causes. Her death came close in time to those of her only two siblings.
Hat tip to Dr. Joe Duffy of Queen’s University Belfast for sending me this story. For another tale of misuse of legal documents to gain control over a pub in Ireland, see “The Lesson of the Irish Family Pub” that I wrote for Stetson Law Review in 2010. That time the “help” came from a lawyer who contended he was representing the “family” in preparing deeds. For more on Francis Tiernan’s woes and indications of his colorful past, see links below.