Australian millionaire leaves daughters $4.50

SYDNEY - A former mayor in Australia has left her three daughters $1.50 each out of her $3.5 million estate because she believed they were involved in the death of her mother.

Valmai Roche, who died in 2009 aged 81, left “30 pieces of silver of the lowest denomination of currency” - or 30 five cent pieces - to each of her daughters saying it was “blood money due to Judas”, the Daily Telegraph reported Monday.

The daughters - Deborah Hamilton, Fiona Roche and Shauna Roche - were also left equal shares in their mother’s jewellery on condition that they read and correctly answered questions relating to her personal diaries from January 1974 till the date of her will, which was signed in October 1981.

The will left the major part of her estate to a Catholic charity for men named Knights of the Southern Cross, while her ex-husband John Roche, who was Adelaide City Council Lord Mayor during 1975-77, was also left the same amount as her daughters.

The will further states that Roche “specifically excludes” her children and former husband “from any further benefits” because her daughters “have been adequately provided for… and because of their estrangement” during her later years.

He ex-husband was excluded from further benefit due to the “irretrievable breakdown” of their marriage, which ended in divorce in November 1983.

Her daughter Fiona Roche now heads the family’s Roche Group of companies - an empire that regularly appears in world’s rich list.

Two of Roche’s daughters, however, said their mother was “delusional” and that they were challenging her will in the South Australian Supreme Court.

Hamilton has said her mother’s “delusions” rendered her incapable of “making a reasonable and proper disposition of her estate”, making her will invalid.

Before her death, Roche’s mother, Dorothy Maud Haber, was being cared for in a private nursing home, but none of the documents say how or when she died.