An uncle has been put behind bars in a £473,000 family fight over a will.

Mark Totton, 51, was left in charge of mum Hazel Totton’s estate when she died in 2019.

She left half her possessions to her granddaughter, Hollie Totton, 25, and her grandson Daniel Washer, 19.

But three years later, the Essex siblings haven’t had a penny – and Totton refuses to say what he did with the money.

The dad-of-one was sentenced to six weeks in prison on Friday after being sued by his niece and nephew at the High Court.

Yet, business project manager Ms Totton and university student Mr Washer’s bid to get him to pay up still hasn’t worked.

They still don’t have their inheritance, with their barrister saying they will have to consider their next steps.

Totton breached a court order after his young relatives took legal action earlier this year. 

The events organiser failed to obey an order to set out the assets of the estate within a certain time and to give a full account of his dealings with it.

After being ordered back to court, he did not show up to face justice and police were forced to track him down – however, he still refused to say more about where the money has gone.

As he was forced to court, he finally ‘took steps’ to comply with the orders by listing what was in the estate – £425,000 from the proceeds of sale of his mum’s house and £48,000 in savings and investments.

But he claimed he had been advised to say nothing more in order to avoid ‘self-incrimination’.

Speaking at a hearing last month after being arrested, Totton said: ‘I put my head in the sand.

‘I was relieved when the police turned up to get the matter resolved. I apologise to the court, there are no excuses.’

Totton’s lawyers told Mr Justice Leech he was a family man with a clean record who stood to lose his job if jailed.

He had struggled with depression amid the family row and had always been supportive to his family in the past, they said.

But the judge said the uncle had ‘deliberately failed to comply with his duties as executor’.

He rejected the argument that Totton had never been in contempt of court on the basis he could have relied on his right to say nothing and not to ‘self-incriminate’ from the start.

The defendant’s failure to provide information about the estate and what happened to it when he was told to amounted to ‘serious, contumacious flouting of orders of the court’, Mr Justice Leech said.

Totton, who started his sentence on Monday, has been ordered to pay his niece and nephew’s £18,000 legal bills.

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