A surgeon who inherited his colleague's entire £10m fortune after marrying her days before her death has been taken to court by her sister after she was left with nothing.
Respected doctor Evi Kalodiki was terminally ill from cancer when she wrote a will in December 2018 which split her fortune between her colleague and partner Dr Chris Lattimer and her family.
After signing the document on her last wishes, she tied the knot with Dr Lattimer in a ceremony at her hospice in St John's Wood, north London, the Mirror reports.
But despite making her will hour earlier it was was almost immediately revoked under 200-year-old marriage laws with her husband of just three days the sole beneficiary when she died on New Year's Eve 2018.
Dr Kalodiki's sister, Maria Karamanoli, has launched a bid to resurrect the will, under which she gets a sixth, in a High Court battle.
Dr Kalodiki was born in Larnaca, Cyprus, but moved to the UK in 1984, earning a PhD in venous diseases at Imperial College London, and going on to have a long and distinguished career in medicine before her retirement in 2016.
She was also an ambassador for the understanding of Greek culture in the UK, a board member of the Hellenic Society and a founder member of the society in honour of the Greek poet Giorgos Sarantaris.
She left an estate worth about £10 million, of which £3 million is in England, including her home in Junction Place, Paddington, and the rest in land, money and shares in Cyprus and Greece.
Dr Lattimer, who has since remarried, is also a respected consultant vascular surgeon and a senior lecturer at Imperial College, as well as the author of numerous scientific papers.
Documents from the preliminary ruling by Judge Master Julia Clark said the whole saga had played out over two weeks at the end of Dr Kalodiki's life.
She was terminally ill with lung cancer when she was admitted to the St John's Hospice on December 17, 2018, with Dr Lattimer accompanying her and described as her "next of kin."
"On 24 December 2018, the testator left the hospice on a temporary basis to spend Christmas with the claimant and his family in Croydon," said the judge.
"On 27 December 2018, the claimant drove the testator back to the hospice. His evidence is that on the drive back, she looked terrible, and he became concerned that her time was short."
In his evidence, Dr Lattimer said: "I told her that it would be irresponsible and unkind of her to let her die and leave me all alone and unsupported to face her family.
"Evi interjected and stated 'Are you asking me to marry you?' At this point, I said that this was not what I meant, but I agreed to the marriage, which Evi took as a proposal by me."
Dr Kalodiki wrote her final will at the hospice on the same day, left equal one-sixth shares to Dr Lattimer, Mrs Karamanoli, her two nieces and nephew, and the Sarantaris Society.
Dedicating the terms, she told Lattimer him that a sixth share for him was "about right because you were with me for a decade."
Father Damian Konstantinou then married the couple in a Greek Orthodox ceremony in the chapel at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth that night. Three days before she died, the couple underwent a civil marriage at the hospice, with her sister one of the witnesses.
Dr Lattimer says that because the marriage came after the will, the will was automatically revoked under the Wills Act 1837. The general rule is that marriage revokes any will made by either party before the marriage and he says a declaration should be made that that is the case.
That would mean as Dr Kalodiki's widower, he would inherit everything she has in the UK and her "moveable assets" abroad, despite the terms of the will written days earlier.
Mrs Karamanoli is claiming to "rectify" the December 27 will in order for her sister's fortune to be divided up as she had wanted when she wrote it.
She claims the will was made "in expectation of marriage" and her sister must have wanted it to survive, because it would have been pointless making it otherwise.
Dr Lattimer applied for the strike out of Mrs Karamanoli's claim for rectification of the will on the basis that she stands no chance of succeeding. But Master Clark refused the application, saying that Mrs Karamanoli should be entitled at trial to challenge Dr Lattimer's evidence as to how her sister's estate should be divided.
She said Mrs Karamanoli has a "real prospect" of showing that the will is "ambiguous" and that her sister had intended it to "survive her forthcoming marriage."
"Any other conclusion would defy common sense," she said, adding that if Mrs Karamanoli wins, the court could rectify the will so that it does survive the marriage.
She also said that Mrs Karamanoli would be able to put forward the argument at trial that Dr Lattimer might have made a clerical error in writing the will or did not understand Dr Kalodiki's intentions when he did so.
However, she did strike out Mrs Karamanoli's claim that the marriage was "invalid," finding that she has no chance of showing that her sister lacked the capacity to marry.
She said it was clear from hospital records that Dr Kalodiki was capable of having detailed discussions on a variety of subjects, including rearranging her furniture if she was able to move home.
The full trial of the dispute is set to take place at a later date.
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