A daughter who inherited her mother’s estate after keeping the death a secret from the rest of the family has been ordered to pay back every penny.

Georgina Leigh, from Maidstone, was described as a ‘controlling’ daughter who isolated her frail mother in a care home against her will.

London’s High Court heard Mrs Leigh and her ‘dominant’ husband Desmond removed 85-year-old Joyce Smith from the Oxford home where she had lived for 40 years and moved her into the Maidstone Care Centre in Boxley Road.

The couple, from Catkin Close, told care staff to block all contact with family members, who they had not informed of the move.

The couple completed their coup in April 2010 when they sold the pensioner’s £293,000 home and paid the cash into their joint bank account, insisting it was ‘a gift’.

It took Mrs Smith’s grandchildren, Lisa Martin, 35, and Paul Kicks, 36, five months to track her down and only managed to visit twice before her death in 2011, the High Court was told.

But now a senior judge has ordered the Leighs to return it all.

Judge Stephen Morris QC said: “On December 27, 2009, Mr and Mrs Leigh left for Kent, taking Mrs Smith with them. On the same day, they changed the locks on the property.”

Her family tried but failed to make contact and in desperation informed the authorities.

“Mrs Smith was frightened of doing things which would upset her daughter" - Judge Stephen Morris

Accompanied by police officers they arrived at the Leighs’ Maidstone home on New Year’s Eve but no action was taken as the pensioner said she wanted to stay with her daughter.

Mr Morris said within a couple of weeks she had been moved into a care home where she stayed until dying in 2011.

He added: “Mrs Smith was frightened of doing things which would upset her daughter.

“The reason she told the police that she was happy to remain in Maidstone was because she was worried about the consequences for her daughter if she said she was not content.”

The judge ruled Mrs Leigh will repay £293,000 into her mother’s estate, of which Lisa Martin, of Hilton, near Derby, and Paul Kicks from Oxford, are entitled to 25% between them.

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