When big wins cause a Lotto heartache

An ongoing dispute over a deceased Dublin woman’s Lotto winnings highlights again the pitfalls of not being fully prepared for the eventuality of winning

‘IF THE weather, mounting bills and the recession are getting you down then we’ve got some good news,” cheered the website of the National Lottery this week, announcing that an extra €2 million was being added to tonight’s jackpot. And even though the odds of winning the jackpot are long – about 1 in 8,000,000 – if you want to avoid being embroiled in a Lotto row, like the one running in a Tralee court this week, it might be worth organising in advance for the eventuality that it really could be you.

The latest lottery dispute concerns Dublin woman Kay Ellison, who won €450,000 in the Lotto two years ago. Her nephew and brother are both contesting their right to a share in her winnings, which she kept in a bank account until her death in 2007, when her brother became the main beneficiary of her will. (She left her nephew €1,000.)

A written lottery syndicate agreement between Kay Ellison and the person she wanted to receive half of the Lotto win would have spared her relatives all the expensive legal wrangling, not to mention the less-than-flattering descriptions in court of her as a woman who lived in a “shambles” of a house and who, despite having more than €1 million in savings in the bank when she died, “wouldn’t spend Christmas”. Judgment has been reserved until February 25th.

According to Paula McEvoy, a spokesperson for the National Lottery, there have only been a handful of disputes since Lotto was set up in 1988. “Most of these are settled before we ever get to hear about them,” she says.

The most hotly contested of those that did end up in court involved a Co Mayo syndicate eight years ago, where one of the five members, who was in arrears with his twice-weekly subs, was initially found by the High Court to be entitled to a share of one fifth of the more than £2 million prize.

However, just before Christmas last year, that decision was overturned by the Supreme Court, which ruled that, because the man was in arrears, he was not a member of the syndicate at the time of the win.

A more unusual case concerned the Cullens from, appropriately enough, Prosperous, Co Kildare, who back in 2001 claimed to be the holders of a winning Lotto ticket worth £1.65 million pounds. Their win was contested by another Co Kildare couple, the Murrays, who claimed they had picked the same numbers as were on the winning ticket, based on family birthdays, and had handed in those numbers but were given a quickpick ticket by mistake. A settlement was reached before the case went to the High Court, with both couples agreeing to split the winnings evenly.

OVERSEAS, TOO, lottery rows have broken out, with massive sums at stake. Four council workers in the US state of Ohio are currently suing 15 of their colleagues for leaving them out of a share in a $207 million dollar lottery win. Their colleagues say they are not due a share of the money because they were out of the office and unavailable to contribute to the office pool on the day in question last month. The fuming four, who it has to be said picked the worst day ever to stay off work, claim they are entitled to a share because of a verbal agreement they allege allows for all regular players to share any winnings. The case is ongoing.

One legal eagle at the centre of a high-profile Irish Lotto dispute says that in his experience such cases bring out “the very worst in human nature . . . greed and avarice are still two of the deadly sins”.

Brendan Toale, a solicitor who represented one of the parties in a syndicate dispute seven years ago, has two pieces of advice for those thinking of starting a Lotto syndicate. “The first thing is to pick a set of numbers and always do the same ones – it makes it much more straightforward. The second is don’t be the one to run the syndicate. You are taking on an awful lot of responsibility for people paying their subscriptions or being on holiday or off work sick. I’d stay well away from it,” he says.

“Everyone knows the odds are but people do win,” says Paula McEvoy. “We would always say: organise yourself properly for the eventuality of winning and then everyone involved will get the share they are entitled to and there will be no falling out.”

Lotteries across the US are reporting soaring sales as the global recession deepens, and, with dole queues lengthening, a similar trend may emerge here. John L Mikesell, an American professor and author of a study on how lottery sales rise in tandem with unemployment rates, has said that “when times are tough the prospect of spending one dollar on a remote chance to potentially change your life is appealing”. McEvoy couldn’t confirm that Lotto sales were up because of the recession, only that 2008 “had been a good year because of the number of rollover jackpots. Still, the news these days is full of talk of downturns and economic gloom so it’s nice for people to be able to buy a Lotto ticket and dream of better times.”