Woman used a DIY kit to forge dying mother's will

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Dinah Lambert: Paid £9.99 for a kit which contains instructions and documents needed to make a will without a solicitor, and forged a cheque for £8.000

A woman whose mother lay dying of cancer used a DIY will kit to try to cheat her family out of their inheritance.

Dinah Lambert was to receive a quarter of her mother's £70,000 estate, splitting it equally with her three step-siblings.

But Lambert, 60, decided she did not want to share the cash and used the kit from WHSmith to forge a new will.

Now, she is to serve a seven-month jail sentence for the swindle.

Manchester Crown Court heard that Lorna Maudsley, 79, was dying of cancer in hospital when her daughter hatched her plan.

The retired beautician paid £9.99 for the kit, which contains all the instructions, forms and documents needed to make a will without a solicitor.

She used it to make a will naming herself as the main beneficiary. She also forged a cheque to take £8,000 from her mother's account, paying a small amount to her stepsisters, Christine and Bernadette Allen, and stepbrother, David Allen.

After her mother died in June 2004, Lambert told her step-siblings she had made a new will and they would inherit just £2,000 each.

But they became suspicious because Mrs Maudsley had worked as a clerk at a firm of solicitors and they believed she would have 'wanted to do it properly'.

They approached a solicitor for help and police were called in.

When she was interviewed by detectives, Lambert said her wheelchair-bound mother had happily dictated and signed the documents after they bought the kit while shopping in Weston- super-Mare, Somerset.

But the police consulted a handwriting expert who found that Lambert - not her mother, had probably signed the will and £8,000 cheque.

Just days before the trial, Lambert, of Swindon, pleaded guilty to obtaining a money transfer by deception, using a false instrument and making a false statement on oath.

Jailing her, Judge Anthony Gee QC said: 'In admitting your guilt you acknowledge that what you had previously maintained to your friends and relatives was a pack of lies from beginning to end.'

Outside court, Mr Allen, 58, from Mickle Trafford, near Chester, said Lambert 'was never the dutiful daughter'.

His wife, Margaret, 59, added: 'How can anyone do that to their own mother on her deathbed? It's really sickened us.'

The Allens have spent £7,500 pursuing the case and hope to recoup it in a civil case they have brought against Lambert, who is still eligible for a quarter of her mother's estate.

Detective Constable Gill Counsell said: 'She has caused a lot of upset because of her greed.'

 

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