Claimed by my ex husband’s uncle
And we begin.
What emerges over the next four hours, document by document, is a portrait of a man fighting a war he understood better than anyone around him while knowing that the odds were almost entirely against him. The original share certificate, dated 1995, transferring beneficial ownership of a stake in the Blackwood family trust from a nominee holder to Robert Vale in settlement of a private arrangement — an arrangement whose nature is described in a handwritten addendum as a debt of gratitude from the family patriarch, Cornelius Blackwood, in connection with a business matter that Vale had managed with, in Cornelius's own words, exceptional integrity.
Cornelius Blackwood had been dea