A HIGH Court judge has set aside a transaction in which two banks transferred accounts of a mentally impaired woman containing a total of €157,000 to her husband’s nephew just days after the husband’s death.
Mr Justice Paul Gilligan found Dermot Joyce took advantage of Monica Joyce’s impairment and vulnerability so soon after her husband’s death. He also criticised the manager of one of the banks involved over failure to comply with the principles for independent financial advisers.
The judge will decide next week what is to be done with the money which was at the centre of a 10-year court dispute between the woman’s family and the nephew.
The case centred on the transfer by Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Bank in 1998 of the accounts of Jack and Monica Joyce, who died childless, to Mr Joyce’s nephew, Dermot Joyce, a retired stock controller from Sandymount in Dublin.
Jack Joyce, of Ballinastanford, Claremorris, Mayo, who operated a petrol station in Hollymount, died on January 14th 1998, a few years after his wife, Monica, started showing signs of mental impairment. A month after his death, she began attending a respite home for people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and has since died.
Some weeks before Jack Joyce’s death, Dermot Joyce claimed his uncle told him he wanted him to have IR£112,000 (now €157,000 with interest) held in accounts in Bank of Ireland and AIB in Claremorris. Dermot Joyce claimed the Joyces had referred to him as being like a son to them, and Jack Joyce had said he did not want the money going to his wife’s family, the Prendergasts.
In their wills made in the 1970s, the couple left all their assets to each other. Jack Joyce’s will provided, if he survived his wife, the family home was to go to her nephew and the petrol station to Dermot Joyce, with the remaining assets divided equally between nieces and nephews on both sides of the family. In Mrs Joyce’s will, she left everything to the same nieces and nephews, with the exception of Dermot Joyce.
Less than a week after Jack’s death, Dermot brought then 70-year-old Mrs Joyce to both banks, who said they were aware Jack had previously asked that the money be given to Dermot. New accounts were set up in the names of Mrs Joyce and Dermot, at Dermot’s request.
Mrs Joyce’s niece and administrator of her estate, Evelyn Prendergast, later brought High Court proceedings against Dermot Joyce and the banks to have the transaction set aside because of alleged undue influence on her aunt.
The banks undertook to abide by the findings of the court.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Gilligan said the manager of Claremorris Bank of Ireland, where most of the money was held, had approached the transfer with a preconception it should go ahead without giving sufficient consideration to Mrs Joyce’s interests.
BoI manager Seán Mellett did not know Mrs Joyce very well and did not appear to have inquired into the nature of her other assets or the extent of her mental impairment, the judge said. While Mr Mellett acted in a bona fide way, there was a greater onus on the bank to ensure people “particularly susceptible to exploitation” genuinely understand the nature and effect of transactions entered into, particularly when they were of substantial value.
He was not satisfied, on the evidence, that Mrs Joyce had received adequate independent expert advice to give her a full appreciation of what she was doing when she gave effect to the transfer. Mr Mellett’s intervention in the transfer was not sufficient to comply with principles of independent financial advice because he had a financial interest “in that he had targets to meet in regard to the number of transactions he oversaw”. Mr Justice Gilligan rejected Dermot Joyce’s contention the money was transferred to him because of his close involvement with the couple and from working in their business. The evidence indicated Mr Joyce did not assist “as often or as productively as he contends”, the judge ruled.
Mr Joyce had failed to establish the gift of the money resulted from the free exercise of Mrs Joyce’s will, he found.