According to newspaper reports from Hongkong, the late Cantopop diva Anita Mui Yim-fong’s mother has lost a legal battle to challenge her daughter’s will.
Mui’s 84-year-old mother Tam Mei-kam had challenged the will which left her HK$70,000 (RM28,710) a month out of a fortune estimated at HK$100mil after the singer died from cervical cancer in January 2004. She had argued that Anita was mentally unfit when she signed the will on 3 Dec 2003. Mui died 27 days later aged 40.
However, a High Court judge in Hongkong ruled on Monday that Mui’s will was valid. In a 104-page written judgment, High Court Judge Andrew Cheung Kui-nung said he found Mui’s three witnesses who testified on Mui’s soundness of mind when she signed the will to be honest, credible and reliable. The three were her doctor Peter Teo Man-lung, Mui’s godmother of 20 years Sheila Ho and HSBC’s private trust director Doris Lau.
The court had heard earlier that Teo, of the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital, witnessed the signing of the will but the next day diagnosed Anita with hepatic encephalopathy, an illness of the central nervous system that causes dizziness, interrupted speech and a dull mental state. But Teo told the court that he believed Anita was mentally capable of making a will until she fell into a coma on 24 Dec, six days before she died.
The judge said Teo, who was present when the contents of the documents were explained to Mui and who had spent a substantial amount of time talking to Mui during her hospital stay, was in a particularly good position to say whether Mui’s mental condition was normal. He dismissed the suggestion that Mui was suffering from the brain disorder.
“What is plain to me from the evidence is that the deceased only wanted to give her mother just sufficient money to maintain her then living standard, and nothing else. The rationale is quite plain on the facts she did not trust her mother on managing money. Mui was worried that if she left her mother everything in one go, she would squander it all with the help of her eldest brother, Peter Mui Kai-ming,” the judge said.
Besides her mother’s living expenses, Mui set aside up to HK$400,000 as university expenses for each of her brother’s four children. Her properties in Happy Valley and London were left to her close friend and retired designer Eddie Lau Kai while the remainder of her estate went to a trust fund of which the New Horizon Buddhist Association was a repository.
Tam said she would fight the decision all the way to the Court of Final Appeal and would donate the entire estate to charity if successful.