Barred from their own grand home by children they gave a fortune

An elderly couple who narrated their ordeal that they had been banned from their own stately home after signing the
property over to their children now face losing their beloved villa in the South of France as well.

Self-made millionaire Manny Davidson, 84, and his wife Brigitta, 79, built the stunning villa on land they bought in the lush hills above Nice 25 years ago.


But now the property – which has a heated
swimming pool as well as staff accommodation – has been put on the market against their wishes, with the children instructing an agent to sell it for £3.5 million.

The news follows The Mail on Sunday’s
revelations last month that the Davidsons are fighting a bitter row with their son and daughter over their family home and a £600 million trust fund.

They are battling to stop their children taking control of the money and selling their treasured home Lyegrove House, a 400-year-old Jacobean manor house which adjoins Prince Charles’s Highgrove estate and is currently on the market for £12 million.

Like Lygrove, the villa was registered in the
names of their children, Gerald, 54, and Maxine, 56, to shelter it from future inheritance tax bills.

‘My mistake was to put the villa in the children’s names,’ said Mr Davidson. ‘I was a silly idiot and now they’re trying to sell it. They’re doing the same with Lyegrove.’
International estate agent John Taylor, whose office specialises in luxury properties on the Cote d’Azur, describes the villa as offering a ‘high quality of life’ with ‘a panoramic sea view’. ‘It’s heartbreaking,’ said Davidson. ‘It’s where we spent many happy family holidays.’

Meanwhile, the children continue to be involved in the ongoing legal battle over the running of the trust fund which Mr Davidson set up for them in 1967 and has soared in value over the decades. They have allegedly refused to let their ageing parents return to Lyegrove to recover a collection of paintings, silverware, clocks, antique
furniture and tapestries, forcing them to launch legal proceedings to have the treasures returned before the property is sold.

Philanthropist Mr Davidson, who founded one of Britain’s most successful commercial property empires, told the MoS last month: ‘I’ve been kicking myself for setting up the trust fund in the first place. That’s what is wrong with the system in this country. People give away money in their lifetime to avoid inheritance tax.’

Maxine, a freelance art consultant with a home in Bayswater, West London, and Gerald, who lives in Hampstead, have begun legal proceedings to alter the structure of the trust fund which would
strip their parents of the power to appoint
trustees. Their solicitor Lucy Gibson said: ‘The matters about which you propose to write are personal. My clients do not wish to respond.’

In legal documents, however, they have said their father’s relationship with them is ‘dominant and domineering’ and that they have ‘increasingly resisted permitting [him] to dictate to them the conduct of their lives, financially as well as otherwise.’

They claim some pieces from the Lyegrove
collection were given to them as presents.

Source: dailymail