A 40-year-old man could lose his entitlement to the Northcott trust fund after a DNA test appeared to show him to be the son not of his mother’s husband but of one of Britain’s most respected doctors.

Diana Northcott claims that when she was 38 she met John Havard at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in Pall Mall and told him she was locked in an unhappy marriage, but desperately wanted her only son, Adrian, to have a sibling. Four decades later, her claim that the married family friend, Dr John Havard CBE, “gallantly” obliged, and gave her a second son, emerged at the heart of one of the most acrimonious paternity battles to be played out in a British court.

In court, amid claim and counterclaim, Mrs Northcott, now 79, insisted that her younger son David was not, as the family had always believed, her husband’s son but was really the result of her sexual pact with Dr Havard. Were her claims to be proven, David would lose his entitlement to a £300,000 trust left to him and his brother by their paternal grandfather George Northcott.

Dr Havard, the former head of the British Medical Association, had dismissed Mrs Northcott as a “fantasist” and denied having an affair with her or being David’s father.

However, after initially refusing to take a DNA test, he changed his mind during the case.

Today he and David have to come to terms with the possibility that they are father and son.

The Times has seen a copy of the DNA results which appear to prove that Dr Havard is the biological father of David, with “the probability of paternity being greater than 99.99 per cent”.

The findings would not only mean that David loses his entitlement to the trust fund, but could also damage the reputation of Dr Havard, a trained barrister who played a pivotal role in drawing up laws on abortion and drink-driving.

The doctor, now 83, had condemned David’s mother as a woman prone to “cyclical hates” and merely a butcher’s daughter, the likes of whom he, as the son of a physician, would not have mixed with during his formative years in their hometown, Lowestoft.

The case was brought to court by the managers of the Northcott trust, which had been set up by George Northcott, who made his fortune in the DIY industry, to provide for his descendants. The managers feared that after Mrs Northcott’s allegations, originally made in 2001, they would be in breach of their duty if they did not establish David’s true paternity.

Yesterday Mrs Northcott said she regretted that the feud had not been settled privately.

Walking with the aid of two sticks, she remains a confident and determined woman.

Speaking at her Guildford home, she said: “Dr Havard is a vain man. He accused me of being a fantasist and vindictive. But, I can rest in the knowledge that I have been truthful. It has been so painful for everyone involved. I love my sons. But I had to be honest.”

In her first full account of their meeting, she explained how she turned to Dr Havard, then married to his first wife Margaret, because she felt she could only trust someone who understood her difficult upbringing.

When she was two, her father had committed suicide and she then cared for her mother, who died from cancer when she was 14.

Her first marriage collapsed after her daughter, Fiona, died aged two.

She began a relationship with Vernon Northcott, George Northcott’s elder son. After they split up she married Vernon’s brother, John, a wealthy playboy, after he and his brothers had sold the family business.

But the marriage was inherently unhappy. Her husband turned to drink and she moved from their home in Surrey to begin a life as a socialite in London. It was in the spring of 1966 that she wrote to Dr Havard and the pair met at his club, she claims.

“After David was born, Dr Havard and I met and he said: ‘You can’t just use me.’ He wanted to continue the relationship. We did for three years. He became David’s godfather and came to his christening.”

But after the pair took a trip to Malta she ended the affair.

Her eldest son Adrian, 44, a management consultant with homes in Leicestershire and Slovenia, said he recalls Dr Havard’s visits and believes his mother simply craved affection. “She had lost love in her life and my father was probably not capable of giving her that much affection, so she was desperately looking for love,” the father of two said.

David, a lighting engineer, added another twist, insisting that his brother was really the son of his Uncle Vernon, adding that John had become impotent. Adrian, however, said the proof that John was fertile was that he had got the family au pair pregnant; she had had an abortion.

Adrian said that, six years ago, he wrote to Dr Havard asking him to resolve the issue of David’s paternity with DNA. “I wanted the truth to be out. We all wanted this to be private. But because Dr Havard refused until this year it has hurt a lot of people,” he said. “To me the past is for reference, not residence.”

Despite his mother’s claim that his father was a violent alcoholic, Adrian portrays him as a timid man who “found confidence in alcohol” and remains fond of him for taking him in after he was put into care when his mother declared that she couldn’t cope as a single mother with two children. John Northcott died in 1995.

Dr Havard, who is married to his second wife, Anne, 80, and lives in North London, refused to comment on the findings. David also declined to comment.

Much of the £300,000 in the trust has been whittled away in legal costs.

The case has put a huge strain of family relationships. During the two-day hearing in May, Mr Justice Blackburne , sitting in London, summed up the case as a “tragic family dispute”.

Family ties

1924 John Havard born
1950 Dr Harvey marries Margaret Collis, they have two sons and one daughter
1955 George Northcott, John’s father, sets up trust
1962 John Northcott marries Diana
1963 Adrian Northcott born
1967 David Northcott born
1969 The Northcotts split
1982 Dr Harvey’s first marriage is disolved, he marries Anne Bouttwood, the daughter of Rear Admiral Laurence Boutwood, CB, OBE, who died that year
1989 Dr Harvey is awarded CBE
1995 John Northcott dies
2001 Adrian learns that his brother is thought to be Dr Havard’s son
2003 David claims Adrian is son of John’s brother
2007 DNA test results

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