Daughter wins back £2.34 million estate her father left to the RSPCA

Dr Christine Gill said her “soul had been ripped out” when she discovered she had secretly been excluded from the inheritance in favour of the animal charity.

But after a three-year battle Dr Gill, 58, was told that Potto Carr Farm, near Northallerton, North Yorkshire, is finally hers.

A judge ruled her frail mother Joyce Gill had been coerced into signing the will by her ­bullying husband John.

However, the 278-acre farm may now need to be sold to pay off £1.3million legal costs accrued during the battle.

The RSPCA is also set to launch an appeal against the decision claiming the will stated “in black and white” that it was to be the sole benefactor.

It says the ruling could have catastrophic consequences for all British charities which receive £1.8billion each year in legacies.

Last night it emerged that at the start of the battle in 2006 Dr Gill offered the charity the farm in return for £300,000 in cash and 42 acres of farmland.

Weeks later the RSPCA replied, saying a deal could be done for £50,000 cash. Dr Gill’s husband Andrew was so incensed he wrote a letter to the charity’s patrons – one of whom is the Queen – begging for their intervention.

On the eve of last July’s trial the charity offered to pay Dr Gill £650,000 plus all legal costs to conclude the matter, but their offer was rebuffed.

Her legal fees now top £900,000 while the RSPCA’s are £400,000 and a ruling on who must pay what will be decided at a later date.

It was only after Dr Gill’s 82-year-old mother died in 2006, seven years after her father, that she learned that her ­parents’ entire estate had been left to the anti-cruelty charity.

Neither had donated a penny to the RSPCA during their lifetime and both were keen hunt supporters with her mother even confessing to having an “avowed dislike” of the charity.

Heartbroken Dr Gill, a ­lecturer at the University of Leeds, said she had sacrificed her career, going part-time, in order to help run the farm.

After marrying husband Andrew Baczkowski in 1986 they bought a neighbouring property to ensure they were on hand around the clock.

Dr Gill was given repeated assurances that she would inherit Potto Carr Farm and it was also intimated the farm should eventually be passed down to her 12-year-old son Christopher, the couple’s only grandchild.

Dr Gill insists she had no ­fall-out with her parents and could only assume that her father – described in court as “stubborn, domineering and a bully” – made the will because he had “a bee in his bonnet”.

Giving judgment at the High Court in Leeds yesterday, Judge James Allen QC said it would be “unconscionable” if Dr Gill did not inherit the farm.

She wept as the judge went on to criticise her father’s ­conduct.

But last night she insisted: “They were my parents and I still love them.”