A MILLIONAIRE aristocrat is backing a court fight to make sure his son born via a surrogate will not be cut from the family fortune in a court battle.
The 8th Marquess of Bath is supporting trustees of his family trusts as they seek to recognise the status of his younger son, Henry, amid fears he could be excluded because of historic wording in legal documents.
Henry, nine, is the biological son of Longleat owner Ceawlin Thynn and his 39-year-old wife Emma, the Marchioness of Bath.
But because Henry was born to an American surrogate in the US, questions have been raised over inheritance and tax issues.
Thynn, 51, who runs the vast 9,000-acre Longleat estate on the Wiltshire–Somerset border, previously spoke of the couple’s joy when Henry was born in December 2016, two years after their first son and heir, John, now 11.
He said at the time: “It is a wonder of modern science that the Longleat Bath family has been completed (for now at least) by Emma and I having a much-loved son, helped so crucially by a tremendous surrogate in California, to extend our family.”.
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Thynn and Emma, who married in 2013, turned to surrogacy for their second child after the marchioness developed hypophysitis – a swelling of the pituitary gland – during her first pregnancy and was warned another birth could be fatal.
Henry was named after his great-grandfather, the 6th Marquess of Bath.
His ancestor famously opened Longleat House and gardens to the public after World War Two and later launched Britain’s first safari park.
Concerns over Henry’s inheritance emerged at a High Court hearing in Bristol.
Mr Justice Matthews said three family trusts still used “pre-1970, common law meanings of descriptions of family relationships”, creating “uncertainty as to whether Henry falls at present within the class of beneficiaries”.
The judge said the marquess and his wife believed it would be “unfair and unfortunate” if their second son – and any future children – were excluded.
Three trustees are now asking the court to approve the use of a “power of advancement” that would allow the marquess to make provision for Henry and his future children.
The trustees include James Hervey-Bathurst, 76, of Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire, and Anthony Westropp, 81, whose wife inherited Goadby Hall near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire.
‘DIFFICULT POSITION’
Mr Justice Matthews warned the move could “prejudice the interests” of other beneficiaries, including Henry’s brother, any future legitimate children of the marquess and more distant relatives.
He approved the appointment of a solicitor to represent those other beneficiaries.
Justice Matthews noted that the marquess’s elder sister, Lady Lenka Thynn, 56, was in a “difficult position” and that the nearest adult beneficiaries were “remote”.
The judge also pointed to the long-standing difficulties trustees face in seeking court guidance – a process famously criticised in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House – which eventually led to legal reform in 1859.
The current marquess Thynn took over Longleat in 2010 from his father, the 7th Marquess who was famed for his many “wifelets”.
The two later became estranged after Ceawlin Thynn removed some of his father’s erotic murals.
Thynn inherited the title after his father died aged 87 after contracting Covid in 2020.
His wife Emma, whose father was a Nigerian oil tycoon, became Britain’s first black marchioness.
Emma, a fashion model and former contestant on the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, previously spoke about Henry’s birth: “We are simply ecstatic. His arrival has completed our little family and brought us so much happiness.
“We were just grateful [the surrogate mother] was so generous as to give up so much of their lives for us.
“It will be an important life lesson for Henry to learn when he is older and we tell him what we went through to have him.”
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