Many of us regularly hear the phrase “the ugly Singaporean”. This story really tells you volumes what that phrase means…..imagine you mother dying and you fighting over money?????!,,how low can one get then this?
EVEN as their cancer-stricken mother faced her last days, they were unhappy over how she had made out her will - which gave one of them $50,000 more than the rest.
It was so bad that they were engaged in a heated argument with each other at their mother's home while she lay on her deathbed.
In the midst of the siblings' heated quarrel, Madam Chew's condition took a turn for the worse.
An ambulance was called and the paramedics found Madam Chew, who had terminal lung cancer, in a critical condition.
She was immediately taken to hospital.
And she died half-an-hour later.
Now, nearly 3 1/2 years after her death, the five siblings are still fighting it out over her will.
The sticking point is that Madam Chew had willed to her eldest son Roger, $50,000 more than to his other four siblings.
His siblings are also unhappy that Roger had been made sole executor of his late mother's estate.
His siblings argued that Roger had masterminded and constructed the will, and never imagined that his siblings, who have 'swallowed many of his previous misdeeds would want to expend energy, time and money to challenge the validity of the will'.
They alleged that he had 'forced' their mother to sign the will.
The day before Madam Chew died, the four siblings got another lawyer to see her to amend her will so that her estate would be split equally with no one getting anything more than the rest.
A draft was prepared, but Madam Chew died before the second will could be executed.
The essential question, however, was whether the will that Madam Chew made on 3 Jan 2005 was valid.
And the district court's answer: Yes, it was.
Judge Leong found that Roger, who is represented by lawyers Lim Joo Toon and Joseph Tan, had proved that the will was valid and that his siblings' suspicions were without merit and unsupported by the evidence.
He noted that there was nothing to support the siblings' strong belief that the will was signed as a result of undue influence or fraud.
The judge concluded: 'Regardless of whether the $50,000 was a repayment or a gift to the plaintiff, it was Madam Chew's property to bequeath.
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