Bullying wife must repay £750,000 from will

A wife was ordered by a judge yesterday to pay back £750,000 she bullied out of her "frightened" and ailing husband three months before he died.

Christina Hardcastle ran a three-year campaign to make her wealthy husband give her a half share of his £1.5m home although she knew he was gravely ill and reluctant to hand over the property.

At the High Court, Mr Justice Laddie rejected the property transfer after accepting arguments from Mr Hardcastle's daughter that he had not acted of his own free will. The judge said: "Christina Hardcastle tried everything she could, short of physical violence, to break her husband's resistance. She succeeded."

Mr Hardcastle – a wealthy architect with a "gentle" character – died aged 55 of an Aids-related illness on Christmas Eve 1999.

Three days before his death he made a statement in which he said his wife had cornered him into signing the property transfer on 13 September 1999.

Mr Hardcastle said he had returned from work that day to be "confronted" by his wife – whom he married in March 1997 – her foster-son and two of her friends. He wrote that his wife had told him "that if I did not sign I would hear from her solicitors the next day".

His statement continued: "My wife was very angry; they all urged or threatened me to sign. I was very tired and under heavy medication, which made me drowsy. I could not resist them and signed against my will. I was not given any opportunity to read the documents, which my wife kept."

The judge said the episode was the culmination of Christina Hardcastle's long campaign to secure the transfer of Mr Hardcastle's home in West Hampstead, north London, into their joint names. He added: "By September it must have been apparent that he was not going to live much longer and, by September, she was fearful that the nest-egg would slip through her fingers.

"Everything had to be done to stop that. Eventually, on the 13th, her pressure on her husband overcame his resistance – a resistance made harder to maintain because of his physical deterioration."

Mr Justice Laddie described John Hardcastle's death-bed statement as an attempt to set the record straight.

The court was told Mr Hardcastle was a practising homosexual for much of his life who had fathered two children while married in the 1960s.

He later had a five-year relationship with a man but they split up before he became engaged to Christina in 1996.

Mr Justice Laddie said he met his second wife when they attended the same church. She knew of his gay past but testified that she was in love with him when they married.

Mrs Hardcastle, 49, told the court her husband had agreed to give her half of his home before their wedding day, but the relationship soured when he reneged on the arrangement.

By then it was clear that Mr Hardcastle was becoming "frightened" of his own wife, said the judge.

Mr Hardcastle's employer, Nicol Morrow, also testified to the pressure that his friend was under, describing how the dying man spoke of his resistance fading away.

The architect had told him that "they all ganged up on him and he had signed simply to get some peace", the judge said.

Mr Hardcastle left £150,000 to his daughter, Bridget Bradshaw, but yesterday's ruling means she will get everything – including the house – as the sole beneficiary of his estate.