News presenter Carol Barnes has left more than £800,000 to her troubled son in her will.

James Thomson, 26, who earlier this month was electronically tagged and put on community service for assaulting three policewomen, is named as the sole beneficiary of his mother's estate.

According to probate documents released on Friday, the former ITN News At Ten presenter, who died in March aged 63 following a stroke, left £830,121.

Troubled: James Barnes with his mother Carol and sister Clare, whose death in a parachuting accident left the news presenter devastated

The will was made on July 21, 2004, four months after her only daughter Clare died in a skydiving accident in Australia.

In the document, Carol still uses the surname of her second husband and James's father, cameraman Nigel Thomson, whom she divorced in 1999.

Speaking at her funeral on March 17, Thomson praised his mother for helping him through his 'difficult' teenage years.

Aged 14, he was suspended for 15 days from Varndean School in Brighton after poking a pupil with a dagger-like piece of plastic during an electronics class.

He said: 'Many of you will know my teenage years were fraught with difficulty and pain for all those involved.

'She made me care, she made me love, she opened the world to me. If it wasn't for this, God knows where I would be now.

'Although it was a difficult time for everyone involved, my mum to a large degree bore the brunt of it and for this I'm deeply sorry.'

Two days after giving his tribute, Thomson, a philosophy graduate, went on a violent binge-drinking session, which officers said left him 'deranged'.

And on March 31, he was drinking heavily at the trendy Freebutt bar in the family's home town of Brighton when staff asked him to leave because he was smoking indoors.

Thomson, who had consumed a bottle and a half of vodka, lashed out at a doorman before attacking three WPCs who were trying to arrest him.

After throwing one of them to the ground, he was eventually subdued with pepper spray.

At a court appearance on July 9, Thomson admitted five counts of assault and using threatening words.

He was given a four-month prison sentence for each of the charges he admitted, to run concurrently, but it was suspended for two years.

As well as being electronically tagged, he was ordered to pay £400 compensation to his victims and £60 costs.

Kevin Light, defending, said Thomson was having trouble coming to terms with his mother's death and felt unable to grieve in private because of the media attention.

At Carol's memorial service, her first husband, Clare's father, the former Labour Foreign Office Minister Denis MacShane, described her as a 'national treasure'.