THE LATE Maeve Binchy has left two thirds of her £8.3million estate to husband Gordon Snell who she married in 1977.
The writer’s will, which was filed at the Dublin probate office within the past fortnight, showed the lion’s share of her assets – including properties in London and Dublin – will be left with her husband, as the pair had no children.
The nine page document shows other beneficiaries include relatives, friends, charities and the Irish author’s local golf club.
Separately 29 individuals and groups, including Foxrock Golf Club near Dublin where Gordon Snell remains a member, were each given €10,000 (£8,367).
The Marie Curie Memorial Foundation and St. Luke’s Hospital in Dublin are also beneficiaries of the will which the novelist had witnessed by Donal Finnegan, the owner of her local pub in Dalkey, Finnegan’s.
In 2000 she claimed she had updated her will more than 40 times and had left just £100 in the first draft, when she was a struggling journalist.
She said: “I’m a great will maker. I’ve made my will every year since I was 21.”
The writer died in 2012 aged 72 after building her fortune from a phenomenally successful writing career.
Her books have sold more than 40 million copies, have been translated into 37 languages, and have outsold the work of numerous other Irish writers – including Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Edna O’Brien and Roddy Doyle.
