Princess Gesine's Inheritance Row

13 October 2009

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Italy's Princess Gesine is involved in a £1 billion inheritance battle with her brother.

The 45-year-old princess - who like brother Prince Jonathan was adopted by Princess Orietta - wants paternity tests carried out on her openly-gay sibling's children Emily, three, and two-year-old Filippo Andrea, to ensure they don't have an unfair claim to the family fortune.

Princess Orietta's estate was divided after her death in 2000.

Gesine - who is not blood-related to Jonathan - is said to disapprove of homosexuality and the use of surrogate mothers to have children, which was how her brother and his Brazilian partner became parents.

I don't agree at all with surrogate mothers. OK, people have a right to have children but children have a right to have parents. It has caused a lot of tension with my brother and our relationship has suffered.

She said: "The court has to decide the paternity of these children. Under Italian law they have no official standing - just because you say they are yours, it doesn't mean that they are.

"I don't agree at all with surrogate mothers. OK, people have a right to have children but children have a right to have parents. It has caused a lot of tension with my brother and our relationship has suffered."

Gesine, who has four children with her husband Massimiliano Floridi, is also concerned the unnamed surrogate mother will try to make a claim to her mother's fortune.

She added to Britain's Daily Express newspaper: "What's to say in 10 years time she won't come and make a claim on the estate? Surrogate mothers don't do this sort of thing out of the kindness of their hearts - they do it for money because it is a lucrative business. She could just as easily make a claim here.

"I tried to work it out with my brother but I failed so I took it to the courts and they will have to decide."

A legal verdict is expected to be made later this month.

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