Subscription Notification
We have noticed that there is an issue with your subscription billing details. Please update your billing details here
Please update your billing information
The subscription details associated with this account need to be updated. Please update your billing details here to continue enjoying your subscription.
Your subscription will end shortly
Please update your billing details here to continue enjoying your access to the most informative and considered journalism in the UK.
Christopher Gosden, director of the Institute of Archaeology (Oxford)
Oxford professor Christopher Gosden has been awarded £1 million after his mother left much of her wealth to her partner in her will.
Gosden, the director of the Institute of Archaeology at Oxford, sued after being disinherited in the will left by his late mother Jean Weddell, a pioneering former medic and World Health Organisation lecturer who died in 2013 aged 84.
Gosden was angered to discover that despite his mother once vowing to leave him her London home, she instead left much of her wealth to barrister Wendy Cook, her civil partner.
The professor later discovered that the home had been sold for £710,000 without his knowledge in 2010,
An Oxford University don who sued after his mother fell for a female lawyer half her age and disinherited him has been handed a payout of almost £1million.
Archaeology Professor Christopher Gosden said Dr Jean Weddell had vowed in 2003 to leave him her London home, but he was left with nothing when she died in 2013.
It was after she fell in love with Wendy Cook, a barrister 37 years her junior, and formed a civil partnership in 2007 aged 78.
By the time she died in 2013, she had made a new will, handing nothing to her son, but leaving much of her estate to her new partner.