A struggling Sussex solicitor who plundered the estate of a dead couple has been jailed for nine months.

Jill Radford, 54 and a mother of six, cashed cheques totalling £45,505 over 18 months from money left in the wills of Mr and Mrs Duggan while working as executor to their estate.

Her theft was discovered when an employee at Lloyds Bank, where the account was held, queried a £12,000 cheque she attempted to cash.

Radford, of High Street, Horam, near Heathfield, was interviewed by police and admitted she had been helping herself to money from the estate account.

She appeared at Lewes Crown Court yesterday charged with theft of sums between £1,500 to £2,000 and attempted theft of £12,000, between June 2001 and November 2002.

The court heard Radford, a solicitor, made the cheque stubs out to the Duggan's son but the money never reached him. She cashed the cheques into her own account.

Elizabeth Smaller, defending, said her client was a successful wife and mother, who fund-raised for charity but constantly saw herself as inferior.

Radford, whose youngest sons of 13 and 14 still lived at home, was plagued by bad luck and had run up debts that were spiralling out of control.

Her father and grandfather were solicitors and she ran the family solicitors firm until it was the subject of a hostile takeover bid and she was forced to leave.

Radford and her husband then bought a hotel in Cornwall, just before the economic slump of the early Nineties, which failed.

At one point, they were so poor the family slept in one room in a single-storey former workhouse.

The couple ate bread and jam for their main meal each day and Mr Radford lost two stone.

Mrs Smaller said: "There is a context of years of financial struggle and the desperation of providing for her family. My client wanted to provide a home for her family before she retired."

Radford got a job as a solicitor for Shuttleworth & Co, in Bexhill, and was later moved to the probates and wills department. In 1999, she was made a partner and bought a house.

Mrs Smaller said: "She had debts of £30,000. Faced with that sizeable debt and six children to look after, the prospect of paying it off seemed bleak.

"There was no calculation. She wrote one cheque, then another and another."

Judge Richard Hayward said: "This is an extremely sad case. This criminal behaviour is totally alien to your training, values and background. As a solicitor you had a position of trust. It was a very serious breach of that trust over 18 months."

Taking into account her good character, guilty plea, remorse and the fact she has two young sons still at home, the judge sentenced Radford to nine months for the theft and six months for attempted theft, to run concurrently.

Radford was also ordered to pay £32,505 compensation, the original amount minus £12,000 she had already paid back.