Wild legal battle breaks out over $19million will after Miss World beauty queen dies and leaves a very generous gift for her partner

A bitter legal dispute over a will erupted after a beauty queen died and left her partner to live in her $12 million home indefinitely.

Gail Margaret Thelen, who as a teenager represented Australia at the 1974 Miss World pageant in London, died on April 27, 2021, aged 65, while seriously ill in hospital.

Ms Thelen had made three wills since 2014 before making a fourth and final will a week before her death.

Her last will allowed her partner Steven Rundle Bone, 74, to live for life at her home in Clontarf, in Sydney’s northern beaches, and also gave him $1 million.

Ms Thelen’s brother Paul Petith contested the will and launched legal action with the NSW Supreme Court ruling in December.

Judge Ian Pike ruled that her third will, made in 2019, should apply and that there was no reason not to sell the Clontarf estate.

The 2019 will gave $1 million to Mr. Bone and a one-third interest in a multimillion-dollar trust that paid income quarterly for 20 years to him, Mr. Petith and a third-party beneficiary.

Judge Pike valued the trust at $19 million – an amount that included the sale of the Clontarf property.

Her last will allowed her partner Steven Rundle Bone, 74, to live for life at her home in Clontarf, in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and also gave him $1 million

“If this produces a 5 percent return, annual income will be about $960,000 and Mr. Bone’s share will be about $320,000,” he said.

Judge Pike noted that Ms Thelen’s mental health and cognition “deteriorated significantly” between 2019 and 2021.

He said he was ‘not positively satisfied that Gail had the capacity at the time he made the 2021 will, or that he knew and approved its contents’.

Judge Pike said Mr Bone appeared to be “the driving force” behind Ms Thelen changing her will and that the changes had given him the most benefit, but he was “not satisfied that undue influence was being exerted” by it.

‘Gail and Mr Bone’s relationship lasted just over six years. It was without a doubt a loving and caring event, with everyone looking out for each other,” he said.

‘[Ms Thelen] largely supported Mr. Bone financially, especially in the latter part of their relationship.

‘[He] can easily afford to purchase or rent, from its own existing and yet to be acquired assets, suitable accommodation on Sydney’s North Shore [befitting] his station in life, if that’s what he wants to do.’

The couple met while Ms Thelen was on a cruise from Barcelona to Singapore that Mr Bone was working on, giving guests courses on state planning and wealth management.

$12 million Clontarf home in Sydney’s north was at the center of legal battle over her will

They “soon formed a romantic relationship” and Mr. Bone extended his time on the cruise to spend more time with his new interest after moving into her cabin for the rest.

Judge Pike noted that under the 2021 will, Mr Bone “would have been given the right to live for life on the Clontarf property or, in effect, in an alternative home, receiving such a large proportion of the sale price of would have used the Clontarf property, or the rental. from there, to buy/rent the alternative home’.

Mrs. Thelen died of aspiration pneumonia, ovarian cancer and long-term severe alcohol abuse.