Former personal college head woman who faked her headmistress’ will in bid to say her £4.2million property and seven-bedroom house loses court docket battle

A woman who forged her former school headmistress’ will in a bid to pocket her £4.2million fortune is facing a £200,000 court bill after being convicted of fraud.

Privately educated Leigh Voysey, 45, claimed Maureen Renny left her entire estate to her former pupil, including a plush £2.25million seven-bed house, to stop the teacher’s family selling it to developers.

Mrs Renny died in January 2020 aged 82. Her family, suspecting foul play over the 2019 will – described as being ‘bought from a shop’ – reported the former Barn School pupil to police and she was found guilty of fraud and forgery charges in October.

Along with a criminal record, mother-of-one Voysey has now been left with a six-figure bill – half of which has to be paid upfront – after a judge ruled in favour of an earlier will that an earlier will naming the teacher’s relatives as beneficiaries.

Mrs Renny’s sprawling home Hill House, in Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, was until 1998 site of The Barn School, which Ms Voysey attended as a girl, starting as an eight-year-old.

Voysey had claimed the headteacher had ‘always favoured her,’ giving her the best parts in class plays, appointing her head girl and prefect and that she ‘reconnected’ with her old mentor by chance during the last three years of her life.

She had claimed Mrs Renny asked her to write out a will and organise a friend to sign it on her behalf in September 2019, as she feared that her beloved former school building would be sold to developers if she left it to her relatives.

But Mrs Renny’s family were suspicious and claimed a previous will from 2016 – benefiting cousins Gillian Ayre, Angela Eastwood and Susan Vickers, and the children of her stepson, Thomas and Katherine Renny – was her last true will.

At the High Court yesterday, Master Karen Shuman ruled this was the case, decrying Voysey’s ‘elaborate story’ of reconnecting with her former mentor as ‘false’.

In her claim, Ms Voysey said she had bonded with her former headteacher after visiting her as a carer and then a friend from 2016 and that she wrote her ‘distant blood relatives’ out of her will because she feared they would sell the old schoolhouse to developers.

In papers lodged with the court, Ms Voysey told how she was delighted to find that her former teacher still remembered her when she visited as a carer.

‘Mrs Renny remembered exactly who I was, even though it was 25 years since I’d left her school,’ she said.

‘Mrs Renny told me that she’d been asking about me during the years since I had left her school.

‘The whole experience that day was very touching. I worked one more shift as a carer for Mrs Renny, then visited her as a friend after that.

‘After reconnecting in February 2016, I visited Mrs Renny when I could…approximately three to four times a year.

‘When I visited Mrs Renny, I would make us both a cup of tea and we would talk about my time when I was at The Barn. We both enjoyed that immensely.

‘During one of my visits, she asked me what I thought about The Barn, i.e. Hill House, and I said I loved it. Mrs Renny said to me: “I hope it never gets built on”.’

She said Mrs Renny had mentioned leaving her estate to her in a new will, but that she did not want to accept that her former mentor was going to die.

But eventually in September 2019, the former teacher arranged for two of Ms Voysey’s friends to witness a new will as she did not want anyone to know she was making it.

‘Mrs Renny asked me to complete the 2019 will and dictated to me what she wanted to be written on it,’ she said. Voysey had further claimed the teacher could not write the will herself as her eyesight was failing.

Kate Barrister KC, for Mrs Renny’s family, denied Voysey had ‘any ongoing acquaintance’ with her former headmistress after leaving the school – save for one shift as a carer.

‘It is averred that the only other material time that the deceased and the claimant met was on 19th February 2016 when the claimant was working as a carer…and worked a lunchtime shift looking after the deceased that day,’ she said.

‘The claimant cared for the deceased only once for a few hours over lunchtime on 19th February 2016.

‘The claimant undertook no more shifts as a carer for the deceased and never visited the deceased again.’

She said the 2019 will was in Ms Voysey’s handwriting and witnessed by two of her friends, who were not known to Mrs Renny.

The court had previously been told Mrs Renny had suffered a stroke in July 2019 and had become ‘delusional’ as her health declined thereafter. 

Master Shuman, giving summary judgment for Mrs Renny’s family on their claim that the 2016 will was her last true will, said Voysey’s claim over the 2019 will had been struck out following her criminal conviction.

She said Voysey had put forward an ‘elaborate story of reconnecting with her former headmistress and that led to a change in the will.’

‘She indicated that the witnesses attended her home and she drove them to the deceased,’ she continued.

‘They met the deceased in the lounge and that’s where the 2019 will was executed. What that has proved to be is false.

‘The significant change in the backdrop to this case is that the claimant was convicted on 15 October 2024 for forgery and fraud in respect of the 2019 will.

‘The conviction for forging the will is admissible in the civil proceedings as evidence of the forgery.

‘As a result of that, I struck out the claim because it was based on a false premise that the 2019 will was a valid will, when it wasn’t.’

She then went on to grant probate in ‘solemn form’ of the 2016 will benefiting Mrs Renny’s family – declaring that the 2016 will was valid and that there were no concerns about Mrs Renny’s capacity to make it or her understanding of its contents.

‘The 2019 will couldn’t be more different from that,’ she added. ‘It appears to be something taken from the internet or bought from a shop.’

Ordering that Voysey pay the family’s claimed £197,000 lawyers’ bills on the tough ‘indemnity’ basis, the judge told her over a videolink: ‘You have put up a forged will as being a true will. Something is out of the norm when a forged will is used to mount a claim in court.’

The exact costs figure will be assessed at a later date, but Mrs Renny’s family claims the legal fees are around £197,000. Voysey is awaiting sentence over her criminal convictions.

Hill House was bought by developers Hill Residential in March 2021 for £2.25m; the house was subsequently separated from adjoining land and sold for £975,000 in January 2022.

Hill Residential states on its website that it now plans to build 30 news homes plus a ‘large public park’ on the land it acquired.