Gary Speed leaves £1m to wife and children

The 42-year-old Welsh player and manager drew up a will a year before he died.

Speed’s estate, worth £1,284,472, once liabilities have been paid off, will go to wife Louise and children Tom, 13, and Edward, 14.

A total of £325,000 – the threshold before inheritance tax is charged – was left in trust to the three. The remaining £959,472 was left in a separate trust for Mrs Speed.

Speed also dictates that all ‘personal chattels’ are left to Mrs Speed. He asked she distribute them to people who expressed interest in them while he was still alive.

The financial figures refer only to assets held in the UK. Speed is thought to have owned a property in France.

Mrs Speed found her husband hanged in the garage of their family home on November 27 last year. An inquest into his death later returned a narrative verdict as coroner Nicholas Rheinberg said he could not be satisfied he had intended to kill himself.

Speed played for Leeds United between 1984 and 1996, where he won the English Football League First Division Championship in 1992. He later played for Everton, Newcastle United and Bolton Wanderers before joining Sheffield United in 2008.

He returned to Bramall Lane as manager in 2010 but left the club after a few months to coach Wales, the country he represented 85 times as a player.