Family tears itself apart in feud over £17m of jewels and artwork

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A property magnate and his wife are at loggerheads with their children over £17 million of jewels, antiques and artwork at the family’s stately home.

The Davidson family has been torn apart by a legal feud over their £600 million estate and ownership of Lyegrove House, a Jacobean mansion next door to Prince Charles’s Highgrove home.

Manny Davidson, 85, a millionaire who set up Asda Property Holdings in the Sixties, and his wife Brigitta, 80, put much of their wealth in trust funds for children, Maxine, 57, and Gerald, 55, due to worries about inheritance tax.

They are now suing their children “for the return of a large number of valuable chattels located in a country home owned by their children, Lyegrove House”, their barrister Stephen Rubin QC told the High Court.

Dispute: Maxine Davidson is locked in a legal battle with her parents 

The couple lived at Lyegrove until they moved to Monaco in 2011, but left a collection of artefacts including Elizabethan tankards and Old Master paintings. They want more than 300 items returned, including an “exceptional” £13 million silver collection.

Maxine, a freelance art consultant, and Gerald are “counter-suing” for a further 180 items, including £3 million worth of jewellery, which they claim are rightfully theirs. The family is set to argue over an estimated £17 million worth of items at the High Court this month. The feud has its origins in two trust funds settled by the parents in 1967, with their children named as the “principal beneficiaries”. Most of the family’s £600 million fortune is in them, and Maxine and Gerald’s children are “the next generation of likely beneficiaries”.

The battle centres around Lyegrove House

The siblings bought Lyegrove House, a mansion set in 18 acres of Gloucestershire countryside, in 1993. Their parents say the cash came from “income distributed to them from trusts settled by their parents”.

Manny and Brigitta argue they “ran” Lyegrove, which was viewed as their country home, and they believed they could return whenever they liked after moving to Monaco in 2011. The children insist it was bought as a weekend retreat for the whole family. After relations crumbled, Manny and Brigitta say they were “excluded from the house by their children in 2015”, and spoke out publicly to warn others against giving wealth to children to avoid inheritance tax.

Maxine Davidson also accused them of removing artworks from a home in the south of France, inset

Giles Richardson QC, for the children, said the parents are accused of removing art and antiques from their home in the south of France after the “breakdown in relations”. Maxine and Gerald, who collects Aston Martins, are also demanding that their parents account “for the use of [their children’s] funds in various bank accounts over the last 40 years”.

Maxine, a mother of two, said she plans to attend the court case, due to start on April 25, but refused to comment further. Gerald was not available for comment at his Hampstead home.

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