$20m claim is fair: lawyer
The lawyer for Olivia Mead, the love child of billionaire mining heir Michael Wright who is contesting his will with a $20 million wish list, says she is neither greedy nor malicious but merely entitled to a bigger share of her late father's fortune.
Ms Mead, a 19-year-old university student who still lives with her mother, told the WA Supreme Court she desired a $2.5 million home, a $1.6 million piano, a diamond-encrusted bass guitar, and millions more for clothes, shoes, handbags and fine wine for the rest of her life.
She says those demands should be paid for by the money left by Mr Wright, the son of mining magnate Peter Wright, whose business partnership with Lang Hancock left both families among Australia's richest.
With his sister Angela Bennett, Mr Wright was worth about $2.7 billion when he died of cancer in 2012. The court was told yesterday his fortune currently totals $750 million.
Yesterday, Ms Mead's opulent catalogue was conservatively totted up at about $20 million - even without the Kuhn-Bosendorfer art case piano inlaid with hand-cut lead crystal or the Ritter Royal Flora Aurum bass guitar with knobs topped with 3.3 carat diamonds.
Despite that, barrister Lindsay Ellison said Mr Wright's daughter was not greedy or malicious, and had received little or no financial support while her father was alive.
"This lady had a not very indulgent upbringing with a very rich father . . . shouldn't her status entitle her to the cheese and jam, as well as the bread and butter, and the champagne and caviar," Mr Ellison said.
Ms Mead is suing the executor of Mr Wright's will and Mr Wright's two elder daughters Leonie Baldock and Alexandra Burt, who are involved in the family's wine and mining businesses.
It was revealed yesterday that Mr Wright's musician son Myles would get a $15 million inheritance in about two years and an annual income of about $650,000 until then.
Ms Mead will receive a trust fund of $3 million when she turns 30 but could get nothing if she breaches one of the startling list of conditions Mr Wright stipulated for her in his will.
That included the possibility of exclusion if she was even suspected of a connection to illegal drugs, if she became an alcoholic or was in any way involved in a non-traditional religion.
"It is one thing to try and control (a person) financially from beyond the grave but another that they try to control your lifestyle," Mr Ellison said.
Two financial experts calculated for the court how Ms Mead's demands compared with the spending of the most affluent Australian consumer, noting her estimated yearly expenditure on animals - including an axolotl - was 13 times the most expensive national average.
