Andrew Battenberg: Self-styled lord loses appeal bid for chunk of aunts will

A self-styled lord has lost an appeal bid to secure a chunk of his aunt’s $7.6 million fortune after she labelled him a “lazy good for nothing person” and cut him out of the will.

Andrew Battenberg, also known as Lord Battenberg and Andrew Lee, was to receive $50,000 according to a 1997 will drafted by his aunt Minnie Blanche Condon.

But an Australian court heard Ms Condon altered her will to cut out Mr Battenberg on November 22, 2016, less than a month before she passed away in Sydney on December 2016.

She told her neighbour later the same day she had just removed a man from her will who “thinks he is an illegitimate child of Prince Philip” and was a “lazy good for nothing person that would not work”.

A cat lover, Ms Condon also changed her bequeath to the RSPCA from the balance of half her estate in the 1997 will to $200,000 in the 2016 one.

Mr Battenburg took the executors of Ms Condon’s will, two of his cousins, to the NSW Supreme Court, arguing his aunt had not been of sound mind when she signed the will as she told her solicitor she kept the will under the cat’s bed.

He also said Ms Condon had been suffering delirium from septicaemia caused by a cat scratch at the time.

But it was rejected by the judge who said the medical records showed no evidence of a cognitive decline at the time the will was signed and the cat’s bed comment did not indicate “irrational thinking”.

Mr Battenberg launched an appeal, claiming there was insufficient evidence to prove his aunt knew about the changes to her will.

The NSW Court of Appeal knocked him back again in a short judgment on Friday.

“The evidence before the primary judge clearly justified a firm conclusion that (Ms Condon) knew and approved of the contents of the 2016 will,” the court ruled.

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