Paula Hitchcock asks court to ‘impound’ income of Pratt siblings, as legal saga continues

Richard Pratt’s daughter Paula Hitchcock wants to ‘impound’ the income of one of her billionaire half-siblings as security, as their family feud continues in court.

Paula Hitchcock and husband Nassib Thoumi arrive at the Supreme Court of NSW in Sydney. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers

Paula Hitchcock wants to “impound” the income of one of her billionaire half-siblings as security if her claim that she was unfairly cut out of the Pratt family fortune succeeds.

Barrister Christopher Withers SC, acting For Ms Hitchcock, told the Supreme Court of NSW during a brief hearing on Thursday his client would argue that if she won her case against Anthony Pratt, Heloise Pratt and Fiona Geminder and secured an equal slice of the family trust, at least one of their incomes derived from the trust should be “impounded by way of indemnity to the plaintiff”.

Mr Withers said if a beneficiary – one of the siblings – was found to be responsible for causing a trustee to “act in a way that constitutes a breach of the trust”, the income of one of them should be impounded.

Heloise Pratt and Fiona Geminder. Picture: Jason Edwards

Ms Hitchcock’s legal team also argued that she had a claim to equitable compensation on a loss of opportunity basis.

NSW Supreme Court Justice Michael Meek in October struck down her bid to make this argument, but Ms Hitchcock is seeking to press it.

Justice Meek rejected Ms Hitchcock’s request to claim that she had suffered loss after missing out on distributions from the trust in equal shares to her siblings, and further she planned to calculate that loss after they revealed details of income they received via a discovery process through the court.

However, on Thursday Mr Withers said that “equitable compensation claims are available”.

“We would like the opportunity to put that to your honour,” he said.

The Pratt siblings are defending the case.

Visy Chairman Anthony Pratt. Picture: Glenn Hunt / The Australian

Ms Hitchcock is the biological daughter of the late Richard Pratt, one of Australia’s richest men who founded manufacturing giant Visy. He had an affair with horse trainer Shari-lea Hitchcock. Their daughter was born in 1997.

She first launched her Supreme Court case against her billionaire siblings in 2022, alleging when she was three years old the family trust stood up a deed of exclusion to cut her out of the fortune. “The siblings had a financial interest in excluding the plaintiff as a ‘general beneficiary’ of the trust,” her pleadings alleged.

In October, Ms Hitchcock secured a partial win in the years-long saga after the court ruled she would be allowed to update her case again and argue she is entitled to the same slice of the trust as her siblings because she is and has always been considered not only a child of the late Mr Pratt, but his wife Jeanne Pratt as well.

Richard Pratt with Shari-Lea Hitchcock and Paula Hitchcock Picture: Facebook

“By her claim … the Plaintiff (Ms Hitchcock) seeks to demonstrate her status as a general beneficiary by a third avenue: as a specified beneficiary, on the basis that she is a child of Mr Pratt and Mrs Pratt, because she is an ‘illegitimate child’ of Mr Pratt who (a) was acknowledged by Mr Pratt as a member of his family,” Justice Meek said in October.

“(And/or Ms Hitchcock) was acknowledged by Mrs Pratt as a member of her family, in circumstances where she was a ‘parent’ of the Plaintiff,” he said.

The Australian has previously revealed that Ms Hitchcock says she was invited to regularly attend the Pratt family’s weekly Shabbat dinner, that she was offered a bedroom in the Pratt ­family home in Melbourne’s Kew and was invited on family holidays.

It has previously been revealed that Ms Hitchcock received three payments from her father out of the trust in 2004, 2007 and 2008. It is unclear how much money she received.

Ms Hitchcock’s case continues as the wealthy Pratt family also fight another court case in Victoria, where Heloise Pratt is suing her estranged husband, Alex Waislitz, alleging historical misconduct in the operations of their jointly-owned business, Thorney Investments.