Lynda Bellingham’s widower Michael Pattemore thinks she’d be "rolling in her grave" over the rift between him and her sons regarding what she left them in her will.
Michael and Robbie Peluso lashed out at their estranged stepfather earlier this year for allegedly depriving them of their inheritance, evicting them from their family home and squandering the late star’s cash on lavish holidays.
But Michael – who was married to Lynda from 2008 until her death in 2014 – is adamant the boys have got it all wrong and his late wife would be fuming with the way things have been handled because he’s followed her wishes accurately.
Speaking on ‘This Morning’ on Monday (17.07.17), he said: "She would be rolling in her grave [at the thought of the rift]. I think there’s a puppeteer pulling their strings. They thought there was a huge pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but there wasn’t.
"I’ve given them a flat. Their first email over to our email lawyer was: ‘My boys wanted a roof over their head.’ I’ve supplied them with a roof over their head and now they want it sold. She specifically wanted that I live them the first million and then divide the rest up between our four children – my two kids and hers."
Michael also revealed that the former ‘Loose Women’ panellist was in £50,000 in debt when she died but they had money tied up in properties worth millions.
He explained: "I’ve had 18 months of hell … she was £50,000 in debt. That’s a fact. Across bank accounts and credit cards. Even though she was in debt, we had properties worth several million pounds. Those properties are all in mortgage and they bring an income in now. What the boys never told the nation was that in my will, they got left the first one million pounds plus a quarter share of the remainder of the properties. They could’ve walked away with a couple million pounds."
And that wasn’t the first time Lynda found herself in financial difficulty as Michael was forced to cover her son Michael’s college fees because she was so broke.
He said: "At one point, Lynda’s work went really thin to the ground to the point she nearly let her own house out in London to come over to me to live in Spain but then she ended up getting ‘Loose Women’, ‘Calendar Girls’ and she started to go back up again. The last two terms of Robbie’s sixth form college, I had to pay the fees."
And, although Michael is adamant he doesn’t want to speak about the rift again, he doesn’t think there’s any chance that he will patch things up with Lynda’s boys.
Lynda Bellingham ‘turning over in her grave’ over family feud
