A "devoted family" have been torn apart by a "deeply acrimonious" dispute after one son refused to pay back a £650,000 loan.

Earlier this month, the High Court ruled that Denis Barry, who co-runs Barry’s Garage in Glebe Road, Willesden, owed his parents around £643,000 plus interest.

Judge Dexter Dias KC said that the court case had caused “distress” to the “previously close-knit and devoted Irish family”.

The defendant’s mother, Catherine Barry, said: "I do not know Denis anymore and haven't seen him or his wife and children over the last three years unless from a distance.

“I am shattered from the lies he has told... he is someone we don't know any more and a very changed man."

The court heard that in 2015 and 2016, Denis’ parents loaned him hundreds of thousands of pounds to purchase properties in Salmon Street and Reeves Avenue in Kingsbury.

The couple, who are aged in their 70s, claimed that he had never paid them back, something he denied.

Mr and Mrs Barry said that they needed the money to pay off the mortgage on their own home, and to live in their advanced years.

Although Denis Barry agreed that he had been loaned the money from his parents, he claimed that subsequently they promised £500,000 could be written off.

He conceded that the remaining amount still existed, but that as it was to a company controlled by him and his wife, they needed to sue the company, and not him personally.

In his ruling, Judge Dias said: "The defendant has failed to prove on a balance of probabilities that the Salmon Street and Reeves Avenue loans were written off." 

He added: “On this, Mrs Barry was telling the truth; the defendant was not.”

The ruling means Denis Barry is liable for paying back the full amount loaned to him by his parents.

Judge Dias said that the defendant had "devised a series of elaborate, unreliable and untrue accounts" in order to wriggle out of repayment.

He concluded: “His refusal to repay the claimants the money he unquestionably owes them - because this is a very serious amount of money loaned in contracts all parties intended to be legally enforceable - has caused his ageing parents both hardship and, I have no doubt more painfully, profound heartache.”