A High Court judge has ruled that a diamond solitaire and two other rings worth a combined €25,000 form part of the estate of a now deceased woman from Foxrock, Co Dublin.
The judge made the orders concerning the administration of the multimillion estates of the deceased married couple Elizabeth Connolly and her husband Matthew.
The orders include one stipulating that the diamond solitaire and the two rings belonging to Mrs Connolly form part of her estate.
The estates of Ms Connolly and her husband Matthew, who died in 2015 and 2016 respectively, within six months of each other, include their home at Westminster Road in Foxrock, and some company shareholdings, including in Connolly Shoe Company Ltd and Leinster Shoes Limited.
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Elizabeth Connolly’s estate, including the family home, had an estimated net value of more than €6 million and her husband’s estate, which includes the residue of his wife’s estate, had an estimated net value of more than €7.3 million, said Ms Justice Siobhán Stack.
The family home is to transfer equally to their four adult children, the judge said.
A document filed in the estate of Mr Connolly stated his son Ronan would benefit by €1.3 million from his will, his daughters Carol and Ann would receive assets to the value of €1.475 million each and his son Matthew James would receive almost €2 million, she said.
Those bequests would be subject to taxation in the usual way and may require further adjustment for legal costs, she noted.
Various legacies had been made to the couple’s grandchildren, she also said.
David Dillon, a son-in-law of Matthew and Elizabeth Connolly, had, as executor of their estates, brought proceedings asking the court to make orders concerning the final distribution of their estate in accordance with estate accounts prepared by a firm of specialist accountants.
There was no issue about the validity of the wills of either deceased, but Matthew James Connolly, the respondent to the executor’s proceedings, had raised some objections concerning the administration and distribution of the estate.
In her recently published ruling, the judge addressed objections made by the respondent before making her findings.
She ruled that Ms Connolly’s three rings passed to her husband on his death as part of the residue of her estate. Their four children are the legitimate beneficiaries of the rings and any other jewellery and had agreed to distribute it between them but the legal effect of that agreement was in dispute, she said.
She ruled that the jewellery ultimately devolved on all four as part of the estate and notes to the estate accounts should be amended to remove a reference to the jewellery not being part of the estate.
In other findings, she said the late Mr Connolly appeared to have gifted a balance of more than €723,000 in a building society account to an unidentified person some months before he died.
She did not see any basis for questioning the executor’s view that the balance of this account does not form part of Mr Connolly’s estate.
She ruled that about €60,000 in dividends on certain shares accrued to the deceased’s daughters and not to all four siblings.
She found that legal fees charged in relation to the proposed sale of the family home are a legitimate expense in the estate.
Fees charged by the executor’s solicitors in connection with a complaint made by the respondent to the Legal Services Regulatory Authority could not be deduced as an estate expense, she said.
The judge deferred decisions, pending further submissions, on some matters raised by the respondent, including whether a small plot of land at Glengarriff in west Cork, which provides access from the mainland to an island Mr Connolly had transferred during his lifetime to his son Ronan, formed part of his estate.
