A mother-of-three who lost a massive chunk of her globetrotting step-gran's fortune due to a probate solicitor's negligence today won about £800,000 in damages at the High Court.

Lorraine Studholm Feltham's glamorous gran, Hazel Charlton, built a collection of furs, ballgowns and expensive jewellery during two decades touring the globe with her partner before their deaths weeks apart in 2006.

Ms Charlton and rubber company director, John Fishbein, of Barton on Sea, Dorset, took two trips a year on the QE2 and travelled around the world more than 20 times in their 22 years together.

Childless and with many of her friends made on cruiseships, the wills Ms Charlton, originally from Leicester, made during her years at sea left the vast majority of her £2.6 million fortune to a cousin and her former GP.

But she had a late change of heart just weeks before she died aged 90 in 2006, drawing up a homemade will to leave the vast majority to her step-granddaughter, Mrs Feltham, 51, of Fordingbridge, Hants.

The will was challenged by the cousin and doctor and, in an out-of-court settlement, Mrs Feltham agreed to hand over substantial sums to both, costing her a huge portion of her inheritance.

Today, Judge Charles Hollander QC ruled that solicitor, Peter Ward, of Leicester firm Freer Bouskell, was negligent in not acting when Ms Charlton asked him earlier to change the will and therefore was at fault for Mrs Feltham's losses.

Ordering the firm to pay damages, the judge said Ms Charlton's previous wills split her estate between her cousin Margaret Atkinson, Dr Surinder Singh Bhangoo and Mr Fishbein.

But after Mr Ward failed to act on her instructions to change it, she, with the help of Mrs Feltham, drew up a homemade will, leaving the cousin and GP only £50,000, while Mr Fishbein had by then died. Almost all of the rest was to go to Mrs Feltham.

Due to the fact that the will was homemade and with the new beneficiary's help, Mrs Atkinson and Dr Bhangoo challenged it and accepted out-of-court deals which netted them £375,000 each.

Defending the claim, Mr Ward said that, when Ms Charlton made it known through Mrs Feltham that she wanted to change her will, he had concerns about her mental state and capacity to make an informed decision.

In court, Mrs Feltham denied being out to get her gran's money, saying that, although she was "paranoid" about the location of her furs and gowns once she moved into a nursing home, Ms Charlton was not suffering from dementia.

Giving his ruling, Judge Hollander said: "Ms Charlton was a lady of 90 who had just lost her long-term partner, had the trauma of being resettled in a strange place, and who suffered from a number of anxieties, in relation to matters such as her possessions, jewellery and home in Leicester.

"As we now know, she died very soon after the period of time in question.

"No doubt she had good days and bad days. No doubt she showed signs of memory loss or paranoia from time to time which indicated some measure of the imprecise term, dementia.

"But it seems to me that, on the evidence, she was, in general, a lady of sound mind in the period."

He continued: "I can well understand how, on the material available to him, Mr Ward must have had a genuine concern that Mrs Feltham, having come on the scene at the last minute, was now seeking to take advantage of a vulnerable old lady by securing a change in the will in her own favour.

"The problem was that the judgment was made by Mr Ward based on the picture seen by himself, and he was seeing only a partial picture.

"In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth."

Mrs Feltham had been clearly "embarrassed" about being made the main beneficiary and, even though being granted the vast majority of the estate would have been a "life-changing" event for her family, she had not even told her husband, he said.

He added that Mr Ward was negligent in failing to deal with Ms Charlton's instructions and in failing to chase up a requested report about her mental state.

Mrs Feltham won reimbursement of the sums given to the cousin and GP in the settlement of their claims and the costs incurred in dealing with them, totalling £712,801, with interest on top of that.