Daughter's shock as parents' £1.5m farm is left to the RSPCA

She gave up on a career as a university lecturer and even moved into a house a stone's throw away to care for the couple as they entered old age.

It was only natural then that the 56-year-old assumed the farm would eventually be left in her capable hands to pass down through generations of her family.

But in a dramatic final twist that came without explanation her parents decided that, on the death of the sole survivor, she would get nothing.

Omitting her from the will for no apparent reason they chose instead to leave the farm to the RSPCA.

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Devastated by the revelation Dr Gill has now launched legal action in a desperate last-ditch bid to reclaim Potto Carr Farm, in Northallerton, North Yorkshire.

'All my life has revolved around the farm, affecting my choice of college and job,' she said yesterday. 'To lose it is like having my heart and soul ripped out.

'I feel like my family history has been destroyed. It's been pretty ruthless.'

She was just 12 months old when her parents, John and Joyce, bought their first farm in Yarm, Stockton-on-Tees. By the time they moved to North Yorkshire in 1975 she knew all she needed to help maintain the 287-acre estate.

Even when she left to go to university, she returned at weekends and in the holidays to help out.

When it became too much for her parents to manage single-handedly she and her husband, Andrew Baczkowski, decided to move with their 10-year-old son, Christopher, into a home on the farm to be close by.

Dr Gill, a lecturer in statistics at Leeds University, then went part-time in a bid to devote as much energy as she could to caring for her ailing parents and, in later years, to the family business.

When her father died in 1999, aged 82, she spent more time looking after her mother, Joyce, who suffered from a range of phobias and did not like to leave the house.

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It was only when she died in August last year, also aged 82, that details of the will the couple made back in 1993 were finally revealed to the family. It stated: 'I declare that no provision is hereby made for my daughter Christine Angela Baczkowski because I feel that she has been well provided for by me over a long period of time.'

All of her parents' personal effects were sold for £13,000 in a house clearance auction, including a stuffed teddy bear Dr Gill had made for her mother. What was not sold was thrown in a skip.

Dr Gill said: 'There was no evidence in my mother's behaviour towards me that she wanted me to have nothing, and nothing in my father's behaviour towards me when he was alive.

'I never had a reason to suppose I would not inherit the property eventually. It's just bewildering. I've had 56 years of a normal family existence and now, at this age, I've got to work out a new life for myself.

'We were working on the farm because it was a family farm. We worked there because we were part of the family and were helping the farm to survive and because one day we expected we would pass the farm on to the next generation.

'I am left feeling that, as a girl, I have been used as a dogsbody on the farm. I find it hard to believe I would have been disinherited if I had been a boy. My parents had plenty of scope to make a substantial donation to charity without disinheriting me so completely that nothing was to be left to me, not even any family mementos.'

She said her parents had never donated money to the RSPCA and that her mother would often criticise the charity for its stance against hunting.

The farm, which is still being worked by a farmer as part of an ongoing share farming agreement, has since been put up for sale by the RSPCA.

Dr Gill, who is launching her appeal under the 1975 Inheritance Act, added: 'I want my farm back. It's a family business and when you work in a family business like that in a funny way you earn your place in it. I'm from the land and feel of the land. The farm is everything to us.'

Last night, a spokeswoman for the RSPCA said: 'We can confirm that the RSPCA has been bequeathed a very generous legacy under the will of Mrs Gill, who died on August 21, 2006.

'Mrs Gill's will contains her last wishes, which were that her entire estate should pass to the charity. The RSPCA is aware of the claim by Mrs Gill's daughter. The charity is unable to comment on the details of the case, but hopes that it can be resolved without the need for legal proceedings.'