Man spends 14 years avoiding people who want to give him an inheritance of $300,000

Lawyers hired private investigators to contact David Glue in London, to no avail. Photo / Krisztian Miklosy

The reclusive and elusive David Bruce Glue has spent 14 years ignoring people who tried to tell him he inherited $300,000.

Now, a court has ruled that, for the purposes of winding up his parents’ estate, David Glue no longer exists - even though he is alive and well and living in England.

Glue’s father died in 2009. Since then, numerous letters have been sent from New Zealand to London, where he lives, telling him about the money left to him by his parents.

The most recent went via courier in August last year. But for whatever reason, Glue has chosen not to respond.

The man’s parents were Margaret Ellen Glue and Denzil Ian Glue, a World War II veteran fighter pilot who was known as Ian. The couple lived in Tauranga in their final years.

Margaret died in 2005 at the age of 81, and Ian four years later, aged 88. Their wills provided that on Ian’s death, their estates should be split evenly between their sons John and David.

John inherited his share, but David could not be contacted, according to the newly released High Court judgment by Justice Pheroze Jagose.

Before John died in 2019, he warned that his brother could be “a bit reclusive”, it said.

The unwilling beneficiary has caused a legal bind for Tauranga lawyer Bill Holland, a partner in Holland Beckett, who grew up a neighbour of the Glue family and knew David’s parents well.

Holland was the trustee of the couple’s estates and could not wind them up until David’s inheritance was resolved.

“Bill’s hands were tied because we knew that David was alive and well; he just didn’t want to get in touch,” said lawyer Rebecca Steens, a member of the Holland Beckett estates team.

They even hired private investigators in London to track David down, to no avail.

The investigators found David’s house, spoke to neighbours who had seen him about, and learned that he was possibly a tenant of the local authority.

This raised the possibility that David felt coming into money might compromise his status as a council tenant, but Steens said this was speculative.

Holland then applied to the High Court to resolve the matter under Section 136 of the Trusts Act, which allows for the distribution of a “missing” beneficiary’s share of an inheritance.

The difficulty here was that “he’s not missing, he’s just avoiding contact”, Steens said.

Despite that, Justice Jagose decided that David’s share could be “disregarded in the circumstances”.

Technically, that means that Holland can distribute the inheritance “as if David Bruce Glue does not exist”, the judge said.

The $300,000 will now pass to the beneficiaries of his brother John Glue’s will, who are understood to be in Australia.

Section 136 of the Trusts Act was used recently to resolve a $250,000 inheritance due to missing man Arthur Wayne Doak, whose brother Keiron had not seen him since the 1960s and had been looking for him since 1995.