A retired engineer used undue influence over his elderly mother to secure land he should have shared with his sister, a judge ruled.

Leila Lackschewitz-Martin, of Kencot, near Carterton, gave her son Dominic the plot shortly before she died in March 1999, aged 95.

But Judge David Mackie QC, sitting at London's High Court, said that 63-year-old Mr Lackschewitz-Martin and his wife Parvin had used undue influence to get the 600sq m plot, on which they wanted to build a house.

Mr Lackschewitz-Martin, a computer engineer who retired on health grounds in 1994, and his sister Mary-Ann, 65, cared for their mother as her health failed.

Judge Mackie said the son suggested he have the entire plot of land.

"Leila's wish that parity be achieved by a similar document for her daughter was not granted," he told the court. "Her wish that Mary-Ann should be involved was disregarded."

The judge said Mrs Lackschewitz-Martin was a woman who could not express her real wishes due to a "combination of frailty and competing calls of affection".

Concluding the land had been procured by undue influence, he said: "If this transaction had been approached in a fair and considered way and Leila given proper advice, I very much doubt that she would have agreed a course detrimental to Mary-Ann, for whom she had as much love and affection as for Dominic."