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Paternity dispute put to DNA test
Brothers clash over share of £300,000 trust
A COURT hearing into a bitter dispute over a £300,000 family trust fund was sensationally halted this week when a world-famous doctor at the centre of a paternity claim agreed to undergo a DNA test.
Until now, former BMA First Secretary, Dr John Havard, has declined repeated requests to give a DNA sample, even though wealthy Diana Northcott says he fathered her second son, David.
David, 39, of Warrender Road, Tufnell Park, is clashing with his brother Adrian , 44, at London’s High Court over their respective paternities in a struggle for stakes in a fund set up in part by the man they have long presumed to be their wealthy grandfather, George Northcott, in 1955.
In 1962 their mother Diana had married George’s son, John Northcott, and soon fell pregnant with Adrian. Four years later she had another baby, and for decades, to the outside world, it seemed both boys were legitimate.
But in 2001 Mrs Northcott, 79, told those in charge of the trust fund that David’s father was, in fact, Cambridge-educated Dr Havard, 83.
Dr Havard categorically denies the allegation, but has so far declined to take a DNA test.
Both Adrian and David have undergone tests, which show it is 99.84 per cent likely they are not full brothers.
This week, after David had given more evidence in the case, Mr Justice Blackburne agreed to adjourn the paternity hearing after he was told by Richard Buswell, for David, that Dr Havard has had a change of heart over a DNA test.
Mr Buswell said: “He is an honourable man. He is a professional, a barrister as well as a doctor, and he intends to fulfil his obligations.”
Mr Justice Blackburne had been told that the trustees of the fund are seeking to establish whether David is the son of John Northcott. If it is found he is not, it will effectively mean he will no longer benefit under the trust.
But he, in turn, has raised question marks over the paternity of Adrian.
Mrs Northcott, of Guildford, Surrey, told the hearing that, desperate for a daughter after a girl, Fiona, from her first marriage died at the age of two, she asked Dr Havard, a childhood friend, to help her out.
She said that, after meeting him at his private members’ club, Oxford and Cambridge, in Pall Mall in the spring of 1966, he agreed to assist.
“He was very gallant about it, saying something like ‘how could one refuse’,” Mrs Northcott told the judge.
Mrs Northcott duly became pregnant, but rather than the daughter she wanted, she had a second son, David. She says her affair with Dr Havard, who has not been in court, continued until 1970.
Father-of-three Dr Havard, who became David’s godfather, says he could not have been the father as he was out of the country at the time David was conceived. |
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