Teenager's lawyer queries timing of slain father's will

By Tony Stickley

The lawyer acting for 15-year-old Daniel McCarthy, who is battling for a share of his father's $2 million estate, has questioned whether the dead man's will was in fact the last he made.

The legal query is the latest twist in a saga which began when Daniel McCarthy shot his father, Patrick, in the chest with a high-powered rifle at their Parakai farm north of Auckland on January 4 last year.

"Whether this was the last will and testament is under investigation," said Daniel McCarthy's lawyer, Gerard Winter.

Daniel McCarthy was found guilty of his father's manslaughter at a high-profile trial in the High Court at Auckland last year.

His conviction - for which he was given an 18-month suspended jail sentence - would normally prevent his inheriting any of his father's fortune.

But Mr Winter says that recently the Court of Appeal allowed a woman convicted of manslaughter to inherit.

Now relatives of Patrick McCarthy, incensed at what they see as a lenient sentence, say they are planning an OJ Simpson-style civil case against the teenager over the killing.

Patrick McCarthy's will, dated January 14, 1982, bequeaths the bulk of his estate to his brother Roland and sister Rosaleen.

The will left a life-insurance policy to his bride-to-be at the time, Julie White (Daniel's mother, now Julie Joule).

But, as the court heard during the trial, the couple split up amid acrimonious claims of wife-beating only months after the wedding while Julie was pregnant with Daniel.

It was not until he was 8 or 9 that Daniel McCarthy first met his father, later moving to live with him on the farm.

"The will that has been probated is dated 1982," said Mr Winter.

"To us it certainly seems unusual that a person of such precision would not have ordered his affairs to take into account his changed circumstances."

During the trial, he said, it emerged that Patrick McCarthy was a man of meticulous habits, who even recorded in a diary the time of every phone call he made.

"At law this is the last will and testament at the moment, but if anyone knows anything different, I would like them to make contact with us," said Mr Winter.

In his statement of claim for a slice of the estate, Daniel McCarthy says the shooting was "in all respects a non-deliberate and accidental one caused primarily by the abuse I suffered as a son of the deceased during the time I lived with him."