Paula Pratt: ‘My family dumped me from the family trust when I was 3

The full details of the love child of late billionaire Richard Pratt’s case against the family trust have been revealed.

The love-child of late billionaire Richard Pratt has claimed in court documents that the business titan’s family took advantage of the fact that she was an infant when they cut her out of the family trust.

Paula Pratt was three-years-old when her father’s family – whose wealth has been estimated at $24 billion – passed “a deed of exclusion” to remove her as a beneficiary of the family trust in 2001, according to documents released this week by the NSW Supreme Court.

The alleged details were revealed in Paula’s statement of claim and the Pratt family’s defence documents that were filed with court after the 26-year-old launched legal action in an attempt to be included as a beneficiary of the family trust.

Paula has asked the court to order that she be financially compensated for the estimated millions in trust payments that she has missed out on over the last 22 years, the documents said.

Paula Pratt with fiance Nasssib Thoumi. Instagram

She also wants the court to order the trust to hand over the original trust deed and its financial documents, including details of payments made to other family members.

Paula, who refers to herself as Paula Hitchcock in court documents, is suing the company that controls the trust, Pratt Group Holdings. The company’s majority shareholder is the billionaire’s widow Jeanne Pratt.

Pratt’s adult children, Anthony Pratt, Heloise Waislitz and Fiona Geminda are also named as defendants in the case.

They have filed a defence statement, which denies taking advantage of Paula’s age and says she is not entitled to make the claim on the Pratt estate because the deed of exclusion was legally valid.

Paula, who was born in 1997 and is the daughter of Pratt and his Sydney mistress Shari-Lea Hitchcock.

Her existence was revealed in 2000 when one of Pratt’s lawyers ­accidentally told a journalist that hush money had been paid to a nanny employed to look after her.

Richard Pratt in 2007.

Pratt died in 2009, setting off a legal battle over his estate.

In 2015, Paula and her mother confidentially settled their claim. Paula was reported to have received tens of millions, a Watsons Bay house and shares.

Paula launched the current legal action on May 19, 2022.

The 26-year-old’s statement of claim says Pratt’s family timed the exclusion deed to occur before a paternity test proved the billionaire was her father.

The Pratt family denied this in their defence claim.

Shari-Lea Hitchcock. Pic John Grainger

Paula’s document also says the move came “at the request or direction of one or more” of Pratt’s other children, who she referred to as “siblings”.

She has alleged in the document that the siblings executed the exclusion deed to “protect” and “further” their financial interests.

In their defence statement, the Pratts’ denied this was the case.

Paula has asked the court in her document to award her “compensation” from the trust and to force the Pratts to hand over trust documents, which they claim in their defence that she is not entitled to see.

Paula claims in her document that the exclusion deed did not remove her legal status as a “specified beneficiary”, and was entitled to trust payments. The Pratt family denied this in their defence documents.

The 26-year-old’s document claimed that her removal from the trust “involved taking advantage of the fact that (I) was an infant, suspected of being a child of Richard Pratt but whose paternity had not yet been determined..”

She claimed the attempt to remove her from the trust came at a time “where the trustee knew that if and when Richard Pratt was determined to be (Paula’s) father, that she would have the same interests as a general beneficiary of the Trust as the siblings…”

The case continues.

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