SINGAPORE: A High Court judge on Tuesday ( Jan 21 ) dismissed a woman’s bid to contest her husband’s will, which left her nothing upon his death in 2015.
The man’s will stated that he did not want to leave anything to the woman because he only married her” to help her extend her stay ( in Singapore ) as an accompanying person to her child”, who was studying here.
The family is a Chinese federal who came to Singapore on a long-term visit go with her child. She became her father’s client in 2011, and married him in 2013.
The father was the sole proprietor of the three-room level where they lived up. When he died, he left all his goods, including the straight, to his half-sister.
The family originally challenged the validity of the will, but her state was dismissed by a city judge.
On Tuesday, Justice Choo Han Teck dismissed her charm against that choice.
Creating OF THE WILL
The husband, a diabetes, was hospitalised after feeling frantic in July 2015. He received operation to dislocate his remaining finger on Aug 12, 2015, and apparently signed his may five days later. He died in September 2015.
The prosecutor considered data from one of the man’s companions who claimed to have known him for more than 45 times.
According to this companion, the man said his wife had never visited him in the hospital. Realising that his family did not care for him, he told the friend that his marriage was a farce and that he did not wish to keep his straight to his family.
The companion testified that the gentleman asked him to help make his will. The friend made the preparations, and the person signed his will in hospital. The administrator, who was the man’s grandson, and two testimony were there.
The will was not executed in normal circumstances, but Justice Choo found it could not be presumed that the person had the intellectual capacity to make choices about it at the moment.
The person “may probably still have been affected by the physical and emotional pain of losing his forefoot”, said the judge, and might not have been in the right frame of mind.
But, medical records describing the boy’s sensitive and secure state on Aug 17, 2015, pointed towards him having the emotional capacity to make such decisions, the prosecutor said.
The prosecutor also believed the information of those present at the drafting of the will, who testified that the person was alert, ready to accept them and spoke generally to them.
He noted that these people did not appear to have anything to get from the would, as none of them were directly related to its benefactor, the boy’s half-sister.
” In the circumstances, I do not believe that the district judge was wrong to find that the deceased had bequest capacity to make the would,” said Justice Choo.
The family learned of her father’s may a few days after his death.
On Feb 16, 2016, the boy’s brother went to the level and told her to move away by Mar 5, 2016, as a courtroom had presumably ordered that the flat been handed over to the man’s half-sister.
The woman immediately filed a match to nullify the will.
WAS THE Relationship A SHAM?
In his view, Justice Choo made allusion to what the husband and wife said about their relationship in media reports by journalists from a native Chinese news who interviewed the pair in 2014.
The person was reported as saying that he and his family had no consummated their relationship and not held hands, that he addressed her as “miss”, and that they scarcely spoke more than a few phrases to each other every day.
He also claimed he could not tolerate his wife’s behaviour after they got married, which included not making payments for rent and utilities. He said he had suggested annulling their marriage, but she refused to.
The woman denied that her husband had made such a suggestion. She said that she was truly in love with him and he gave her a sense of home. She was reported as asking why she needed to pay him rent as his wife.
She also claimed to have framed and hung their marriage certificate up in their flat “out of anger” because her husband “did not dare to acknowledge that he was married”.
The woman was distressed by the articles, and started paying her husband rent in November 2014.
The man later allowed her to rent out one of the rooms in the flat, and asked her to pay him S$ 600 ( US$ 441 ) a month once the room was rented out. She also paid for utilities and covered taxes.
In a letter laying out this arrangement, the man said the woman would be responsible for day-to-day activities such as housekeeping and accompanying him to medical appointments.
Justice Choo said the news articles were inadmissible hearsay evidence as the journalists did not testify in court. He noted that the district judge may have mistakenly considered their contents.
The burden was still on the woman, as the claimant, to show that her husband’s will was irrational, said the judge.
She could do this by showing that she did not need to marry her husband to extend her stay in Singapore, or that her marriage was not a sham.
The woman claimed that she could have stayed in Singapore until 2018 on her long-term visit pass, and did not need to extend her stay.
But Justice Choo said the woman could have been looking to stay beyond 2018, in which case marrying her husband would have increased her chances of staying, or of her daughter getting permanent residency.
Justice Choo also found that the woman had not shown enough evidence to prove her marriage was not a sham.
She relied on evidence from two friends about how she and the man had interacted before and on the day of their marriage. But they did not give evidence on the couple’s interactions after the marriage, so this did not help her.
In contrast, the man’s friend and nephew both testified that the man had told them his marriage was a sham.
The judge also found insufficient evidence that the will was forged, although a forensic handwriting analysis of a certified true copy of the will could not conclusively prove that the man’s signature on the document was authentic.
Parties have not been able to find the original copy of the will.
Justice Choo found that “apart from making a stab in the dark with bare allegations”, the woman also failed to support her claim that her husband’s friend, nephew or siblings exercised undue influence over him in the making of the will.
The judge observed that “much trouble and uncertainty could have been avoided if the respondents had procured a doctor to serve as an independent witness to a testator who was recovering from a major surgery”.
” Moreover, drawing up one’s will without professional help, especially at one’s deathbed, is not wise,” he said.