Millionaire cut daughter out of will after his carer ‘coerced him into predatory marriage’

Only child, 70, of ‘vulnerable’ 94-year-old who died 11 months after wedding woman 39 years junior tells court she blames her for rejection

The disinherited only daughter of a millionaire butcher is fighting in court over her father’s will, claiming he was lured into a “predatory marriage” by his carer.
Robert Harrington died aged 94 in May 2020, just 11 months after marrying Guixiang Qin, who was 39 years younger than him.
Mr Harrington, who lived an isolated rural life in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, had buried his first wife of 66 years, Eileen, in January 2018.
In March 2020, two months before his death, he made a new will, leaving everything to his new bride and cutting out his only child, Jill Langley, 70.
Mrs Langley, who says her parents both “idolised” and shared a “close and loving relationship” with her before their deaths, is now accusing Ms Qin of exerting undue influence on her ailing father in order to pocket his fortune.
But lawyers for Ms Qin deny the allegations, insisting father and daughter were estranged.
She also denies she was merely a carer and insists that Mr Harrington proposed after they embarked on “a loving and sexual relationship”, leaving her everything because he “wanted to look after her”.
James McKean, for Mrs Langley, told Recorder Robert McAllister at Central London County Court that Mr Harrington ended up in an “ill-maintained grave” separate to the plot where he had wished to lie alongside Eileen.
Giving evidence, Mrs Langley said: “There was never any doubt that I would be the sole recipient of my parents’ inheritance.”
Her father had already been displaying “strange behaviour” when he moved into his home in King’s Lynn in 2015, her barrister continued.
Medical evidence suggested he was “most likely suffering from a paranoid delusional disorder” in his final years, he added.
The last time Mrs Langley saw her father was at her mother’s funeral when she recalled him looking “very frail and vulnerable” and “rambling”.
Soon after, she received a letter, stating: “This letter will be the last contact I ever attempt to make.”
The first she knew of his new marriage was when she received a note from Ms Qin in March 2020, reading: “Just to let you know that Dad married again last year.”
She argues that her father’s last will should be set aside on grounds of “want of testamentary capacity, want of knowledge and approval, and undue influence”.
That new will nullified the terms of a previous one made in 2012, which named Mrs Langley as his ultimate heir, it is claimed.
Mrs Langley’s barrister told the judge: “The justification given for the will was incoherent, bizarre and in places simply untrue, including the suggestion that his daughter had not seen her father for seven to eight years.”
Mr McKean accepted that he could not point to any direct evidence of “coercion”, but claimed that “the documentary evidence shows Ms Qin’s incremental attempts to take control of (Mrs Langley’s) father’s assets: by marriage, by will and by attempted proprietary transfer”.
Mrs Langley claims her stepmother first met her father while working as his paid carer, although this is disputed by Ms Qin.
“However they met, the deceased’s wealth, isolation and vulnerability would have been obvious,” added the barrister.
“Alarmingly soon, Ms Qin took advantage. On her own case, she first met the deceased in 2018, she moved in with him in February 2019, Mr Harrington proposed in April and they were married by June 2019.
“By early 2020, attempts were being made to transfer his house into her name and the will was made in March 2020.
“Ms Qin says this was a loving and romantic relationship, this strains credulity.”
In defence documents put forward for the trial for Ms Qin, barrister Richard Buston said: “The decision to remove his daughter from his last will was not out of the blue.”
The relationship between father and daughter was already “nonexistent” when he married in what the barrister claims was a perfectly legitimate union.
“The documentary evidence, such as medical notes and what he has told solicitors, all points to a loving and sexual relationship,” he told the judge.
“It is clear the deceased was very fond of the defendant, and he made his views clear that he wanted to look after her.
“The evidence clearly points to a relationship between dad and daughter that was difficult and importantly one that had been on a downward trajectory, such to the extent that even before the defendant arrived on the scene there was a total breakdown in relations.
“The claimant did not speak with the deceased for a number of years before his death.”
Mr Buston alleged that Mr Harrington did not like his daughter’s husband.
Mrs Langley’s claim that the marriage was “in secret” was also “nonsense”, he added.
He also told the judge that “there is no evidence that the deceased was pressurised … to change his will”. The hearing continues.