Woman lost her inheritance after disputing dad’s right to sell his property

An elderly man was so infuriated after his daughter fought with him over the sale of a house that he wrote a new will and gave her shares in the family’s companies to her brother instead.

The dispute arose when the patriarch, then 92, wanted to sell one of his 11 properties held jointly with his wife.

His daughter, who was the legal representative for her dementia-stricken mother, objected to the sale.

She said she had to protect her mother’s assets and that her mother would not have agreed to selling that particular house because it was where the family spent many happy moments when they were younger.

Not long after that, she openly defied the patriarch’s decisions in front of the accountants during a business meeting, and that greatly embarrassed and angered him.

Instead of reasoning with her father over her concerns, she later exacerbated the hurt by engaging lawyers to send formal letters to him, alleging that the sale of the house was against the interests of her mother. She also demanded that the patriarch undergo a “mental capacity assessment”.

The letters deeply incensed the patriarch, who referred to his daughter as the “greedy” one to his own lawyers.

Two days after receiving the letters, he wrote his fifth and final will, removing his daughter’s name as a substantial shareholder in some of his companies and giving those shares to his son.

He also removed her as a joint executor of his will, appointing his son as the sole executor. His elder daughter and an adopted son were not involved in the dispute.

It was bizarre that the relationship between father and daughter could deteriorate so quickly to the point of no return when she used to enjoy absolute trust from her father as his “hands and brains” in his various businesses.

Apart from sacking her from the family business, the patriarch later also turned his gun at her by evicting her and her family from one of his houses that they were living in and lodging a police report over her “illegal intrusion” into the business offices.

He died barely three months after writing the last will.

Its validity, however, was challenged not by the daughter but by one of his beloved grandsons, who ended up disinherited because of an unintended legal mistake in the will, which was done not by a law firm but by a company providing will-writing services.

To add to this grandson’s woes, the will was upheld by the High Court, which meant he might not receive a house that was gifted to him by his late grandfather.

Here are three important lessons on legacy planning for all families.

Engage lawyers to write wills

Despite having 11 properties, including a good class bungalow, the patriarch hired someone from a will-writing company who was not legally trained to draw up his final will.

Ironically, while his two lawyers were also present then to draw up his lasting power of attorney, he did not ask them to write his will.

Perhaps he thought it was cheaper to use a will-writing service, as he had actually haggled with the employee over the fee.

But this resulted in a devastating blow to one of his beloved grandsons, as no one advised the old man on the rules governing property when he was changing his will.

He had originally planned to give a house that he owned solely to his younger grandson and a bigger and new house that was owned jointly with his wife to the elder grandson.

But in his latest will, he swopped that gift because he recalled that his elder grandson had asked whether he could keep the older house, as he used to live there with his family.

The doting grandfather fulfilled this wish in his final will by swopping his two gifts, but this unfortunately led to the elder grandson getting both houses and his brother getting nothing.

After the swop, the younger grandson was supposed to get the newer house, but it was jointly owned by his grandparents, which meant that his grandfather could not just give the whole house away.

This is because when couples own a property jointly, the law presumes that the sole survivor will inherit the whole house, unless there is evidence to suggest otherwise.

The younger grandson could not inherit this property because in his grandmother’s will, this house would go to his elder brother.

As his grandmother is no longer able to change her will due to dementia, the only way he could own this house was for his brother to forgo this inheritance.

This “tragedy of legal drafting” could have been avoided if the patriarch had stated in his will that since he paid for the whole house, he remained its sole beneficial owner, and that he never intended for his wife to have any share of it because she was a joint owner in name only.

That would have opened the door for the younger grandson to apply for a court order to have the house transferred to his name.

His predicament should present a cautionary tale on why it is prudent to get lawyers to draft your wills.

Age is just a number

The validity of the patriarch’s final will was challenged because his younger grandson argued that the 92-year-old man did not have the mental capacity to make legacy decisions.

The old man was then suffering from various health problems, including Parkinson’s disease, which caused him to have slowness of movement, memory loss and occasional episodes of hallucinations and delusions.

But Senior High Court Judge Chan Seng Onn noted that the law would not invalidate the will simply because of the patriarch’s age or medical conditions, so long as he was able to understand what he was doing then.

The elderly man’s doctors noted that he did not suffer from dementia and that his other mental conditions were probably the side effects of certain medications that he was taking.

In particular, the judge found that on the day that the man signed his final will, five independent witnesses – the patriarch’s nephew, two lawyers and two employees of the will-writing company – found that he was alert, lucid, coherent and definite in his wishes.

The judge said: “None of them stands to gain from a finding that the (will) is valid. The (nephew) in particular did not have the best relationship with the (patriarch’s son) due to historical work-related disagreements, which further reduces the likelihood that he would give false evidence in the (son’s) favour”.

Solving family disputes amicably

It is never wise to send legal letters to threaten the heads of families because they can certainly retaliate with severe consequences, such as how the patriarch cut his daughter out of his inheritance and family business.

The outcome of this case could have been different if she had resolved matters with her father amicably, since he was the family’s main provider.

Still, she and her other three siblings stand to inherit more of their father’s assets through their mother’s will because his widow became the owner of eight of the family’s properties after he died.

Interestingly, the patriarch had inserted a “no contest clause” in his will, which stated that any beneficiary who contested his will would be disinherited and be paid $10,000 only.

It remains to be seen whether the executor of his will would use this clause to penalise the younger grandson – his nephew – for challenging the will.

What this means is that parents need to use their willpower, and not just their wills, to carry out careful planning if they want to prevent their beneficiaries from fighting.

YHJ v YHK and others [2026] SGHCF 28

Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

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