An 11 year-old girl is battling to keep £500,000 left to her by a 72 year-old neighbour in his will. Little Katie Loveridge was just six when Wilfred Lamb - a notorious farmer who once booby-trapped his land against council workers - bequeathed her his entire estate. The pensioner, of Sandalls Cottage in Hartlebury, near Kidderminster, Worcestershire, made the girl his sole beneficiary after his will was changed just nine days before he died. But his carer, Josephine Shuck, has launched a High Court battle to have the new will overturned because she believes he was not in a fit mental state to change it. Katie's parents Susan and Jim told the Sunday Mercury they had done nothing wrong and were only fulfilling Mr Lamb's last wish. Jobless Mrs Loveridge, 38, said: "Because our last name is Loveridge and we're part of a big family of travellers, Mrs Shuck thinks we're the lowest of the low. "I agree it would look suspicious if we'd only known Wilf for a short time and he'd changed his will just before he died. "But my husband knew Wilf from when he was a boy and I've known him for 17 years since Jim and I have been married. "Wilf had known Katie since she was a baby. He got on well with our three other older children, too, but he was particularly fond of Katie. "She was a poorly baby. She had meningitis and skin problems, and Wilf used to dress her sores. "Wilf just wanted a bit of love and attention and I think Katie fulfilled that. She went everywhere with him - to the park, to his sister-in-law's for tea, to rail shows. "He took her to the opening of a miniature railway in Worcester once. When they got there, Wilf had arranged for Katie to open it. She still talks about it. "People have criticised me for letting them get close but Wilf used to say Katie was like a granddaughter to him." Mrs Loveridge lives with her 38 year-old husband and three of their four children in a council house on Worcester Road in Hartlebury. But the family were neighbours of Mr Lamb before he changed his will on January 2, 2000. "We didn't know he was going to die," she said. "We thought he was just run down and had gastroenteritis. "I visited him in hospital twice a day every day. I took him home-cooked food, always potatoes and vegetables. And he loved my rice pudding. "It was suggested in court that I could have put something in his food. That's outrageous. The hospital encouraged me to take in food for him because it was all he would eat. "One day I went to see him and he said he wanted to change his will, leaving everything to Katie. I said: 'You don't want to think about things like that now, Wilf. Let's just get you better'. "But he insisted. He asked me to write the will and we got two of his oldest friends to witness it. Wilf said to me: 'You've had your lives but Katie's got it all ahead of her. I want her to be looked after." Birmingham-born Mr Lamb, who suffered from a paranoid condition, hit the headlines in 1998 for wiring the metal windowframes of his cottage to the mains when two planning officials ordered him to pull down an illegally-erected shed. He chased off the pair with an airgun when they ran to their cars. He was sentenced to three years probation on condition that he continued with medication. The woman opposing the 2000 will claims that former rail engineer Mr Lamb may have been forced to sign it on his deathbed. Mrs Shuck, of Titton, Stourport, Worcestershire - an executor of the estate - was set to inherit £10,000 from Mr Lamb's earlier will, written in 1996. Other bequests in that will included £10,000 to each of Mr Lamb's daughters - Christine Barnett, who lives in Sheffield and Susan Lloyd, of Weston-super-Mare - and more than £20,000 to Christine's daughter Victoria. It is not disputed that the remainder of the estate was left to Katie Loveridge. But Mrs Shuck, who was an unpaid carer for Mr Lamb for five years before his death, says the widower was too ill to know what he was doing when he signed the second will, which includes Sandalls Cottage and 20 acres of land. "As executor of the estate, my sole intentions have been to carry out the instructions given to me by Mr Lamb," she said. "On many occasions set out in his will of 1996, and in two further codicils, he left various amounts of money to 14 beneficiaries including myself, family, friends and Mr Loveridge. "In the last codicil dated 8 December 1999, he left the remainder of his estate to Katie Loveridge. The estate was valued at about £100,000 then. "I have asked the High Court to examine the authenticity of a third document, dated January 2, 2000, which was presented by Mrs Loveridge the day after Mr Lamb died and drafted in what is considered to be suspicious circumstances. "It was written by Mrs Loveridge herself, leaving his entire estate - worth in excess of £250,000 five years ago - to her youngest daughter, who was then only six." Mrs Shuck claimed there were clear inconsistencies in Mrs Loveridge's account of how the new will came into existence. "In court she said that once written out, the will remained at all times at Mr Lamb's bedside for him to alter or tear up if he so wished," added Mrs Shuck. "Yet in court one of the witnesses to that will stated under oath that he had read it at the Loveridges' home - not at the hospital as she claimed. "Both witnesses said that they and the Loveridges had travelled to the hospital together, but gave conflicting evidence. One said he had signed it on the morning of January 2 as dated on the document, while the other signed it on the evening of January 3. "Mrs Loveridge herself said that the witnesses met up with her in the hospital where she had been all morning, and that all signed on the evening of January 3. It doesn't add up." But the Loveridges say she is mistaken, and point out that none of Mr Lamb's relatives has challenged the will. Unemployed Mrs Loveridge said: "I didn't know he was going to die when I wrote that will. "The estate was valued at £250,000 when Wilf died in 2000, but we have been told it's worth twice that now. "Katie won't get the money until she's 25. It's a long way off, and we might not even be around then. "We're just trying to do what Wilf wanted. If the court finds in our favour, we'll hold on to the property for a while until Katie is old enough to decide what she wants to do. "We'll probably sell one or two of the fields to pay our legal bill, which is about £60,000. But it's Katie who will decide what happens to the cottage." Katie told the Sunday Mercury: "I want to live in the house one day and put ponies in the fields. I miss Wilf lots - he used to play dollies with me and buy me ice creams. "I think the Shucks are not nice people who are lying about Wilf." In court last week, Judge John Jarvis QC, who reserved his decision, suggested that Mrs Loveridge had acted fairly. "The will was signed in a perfectly business-like arrangement with two witnesses Mr Lamb knew," he said. The High Court is expected to rule on the case this week. jeanette_oldham@mrn.co.uk | 
