Boycott in £1m fight with home lawyers who ‘let him down’

CRICKET legend Geoffrey Boycott has launched a £1m-plus High Court claim against lawyers he says let him down on a property deal.

The former Yorkshire and England batsman forked out in 1996 for a home for former partner, Anne Wyatt, in the millionaire’s playground of Sandbanks, Dorset.

When she died, aged 82, in 2009, her half of the house – bought for £450,000 but now thought to be worth £3m – went into her estate, rather than being automatically inherited by Mr Boycott.

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Now he is suing lawyers for compensation, claiming that, had they done their job properly 15 years ago, Mrs Wyatt would only have been able to stay in the house for her lifetime and, on her death, it would have been his outright.

When the house was bought, it was put in both their names as “joint tenants” and Mr Boycott said it was a huge surprise to discover that, in 2007, she had converted that to a “tenancy in common” so that she could leave half the property to her heirs.

When defence counsel, Hugh Evans, asked him if he would have gone through with the purchase if he had known she could “sever” her interest in the house, Mr Boycott replied: “If I had known either one of us could do that, I wouldn’t have gone ahead.”

Mr Boycott expressed confusion over the complexity of the legal issues, saying: “Us ordinary people are meant to get a fair deal from the law. How are ordinary people expected to understand when it’s double-dutch like this?”

The preliminary hearing, at which Mr Justice Vos is being asked to rule on whether Mr Boycott left it too late to sue, is continuing.

The judge is expected to give his decision at a later date.