John Olsen’s stepdaughter loses appeal over $2.2m ‘gift’ from dying mum
A judge was right to find the stepdaughter of renowned artist John Olsen pressured her terminally ill mother to score a $2.2 million gift, the NSW Court of Appeal has ruled.
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- John Olsen’s step daughter sues for slice of painter’s artworks
- Olsen family feud: stepdaughter in court over $2.2m gift
The stepdaughter of Australia’s most revered living artist John Olsen has lost an appeal in the pair’s ugly battle over his late wife’s estate.
In September Mr Olsen won a lawsuit against Karen Howard Mentink when a NSW Supreme Court judge found she’d pressured her terminally ill mother to pay her more than $2 million, two months before she died.
Ms Mentink challenged the decision, but on Friday three NSW Court of Appeal judges found in favour of the 92-year-old Archibald Prize winner.
Acting Justice Arthur Emmett, Justice Anthony Payne and Justice Anthony Meagher ordered Ms Mentink to pay her stepfather’s costs of the appeal.
Justice Emmett said Ms Mentink had already stood to receive a $3.5 million “windfall” encompassing what her mum Katharine Howard-Olsen had inherited from her own mother, and there was no reason for her to be gifted extra money that may have jointly belonged to Mr Olsen.
“Karen’s contentions also ignore the fact that John and Katharine had a long and loving marriage and that the manifest testamentary intention of Katharine was to leave everything to John, with the exception only of some specific legacies and the inheritance that she had received from her grandmother,” he said.
“Karen was also, through the generosity of Katharine and John, to receive the Hurlingham Avenue property (in Bowral) by way of gift.”
Last year judge John Sackar found Ms Mentink preyed on her vulnerable 75-year-old mum Katharine Howard-Olsen to secure the secret $2.2 million dollar “gift”, which she had claimed was a deathbed revenge for Mr Olsen’s suspected infidelity.
The judge rejected this, saying: “it was an act of self-indulgence, somewhat callous and extraordinarily selfish.”
Mr Olsen had testified that just before his fourth wife died of brain cancer in December 2016 she told him: “Karen is after money and the properties.”
Mr Olsen said his relationship with his stepdaughter quickly soured after the funeral, and she began turning up unannounced and taking items from the house, telling the court: “there was constant pilfering.”
Ms Mentink argued Justice Sackar had erred in a number of his findings, including that she’d lied while claiming an operation by celebrity brain surgeon Charlie Teo relieved her mother’s confusion, and she’d only been following Mrs Howard-Olsen’s last wishes.
But the three appeal judges upheld the original finding that Ms Mentink exploited her mother for the cash transfer through “unconscionable conduct” and undue influence.
In August Ms Mentink was ordered to hand over a Burradoo property or its sale proceeds, with all questions on final legal costs orders reserved until the case returns to court in November.
In January the unemployed Bowral mum launched her own lawsuit against Mr Olsen for a slice of his business, artworks and properties, attempting to claw back what she said was rightfully hers after her elderly stepfather removed her as a beneficiary of his will in 2017.
But a July hearing date was vacated by consent the month before, with a judge dismissing Ms Mentink’s claim for a quarter of the value of all the widower’s artworks, his John Olsen company, and three properties worth nearly $2 million.
Ms Mentink had sought damages plus a share of the properties named Moore Hill, Ballantree and Hidden Lake - a $1 million property in the Southern Highlands where Mr Olsen and his wife of 27 years lived before she died.
Ms Mentink had moved in around June 2016 to help care for her sick mother and manage the household, but became “intensely interested” in her estate planning, the three judges accepted.
“The evidence before the primary judge overwhelmingly supports a finding of a woman in a state of severe ill health, confusion and anxiety endeavouring to put her affairs in order before dying, all the while being watched over by Karen,” Justice Emmett said.
The judge said Mrs Howard-Olsen was concerned to ensure that her partner, who was becoming infirmed, would be properly provided for.
“It is unlikely in the extreme that Katharine would have chosen to deprive John of the support that she had recorded in her diary before her illness that she believed John needed,” Justice Emmett said.