![\"gavel\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/fc821b18-gavel-court-bloomberg-160524.webp\"\/)
The Court of Appeal judges said the disputed documents and hearsay were insufficient to prove inheritance rights. (File pic)
\nPUTRAJAYA: A mother and son failed in their bid to be recognised as lawful heirs to a Kedah businessman\u2019s RM14.4 million estate after the Court of Appeal ruled that they had failed to prove a valid customary marriage or a biological relationship with the deceased.<\/p>\n
A three-member bench, chaired by Justice Ahmad Kamal Shahid, unanimously dismissed the appeal by SSL and YKC, who claimed SSL was the businessman\u2019s second wife through a Chinese customary marriage in 1976 and that YKC was their biological son.<\/p>\n
Kamal, who delivered the unanimous judgment, said the appellants failed to establish their claims with credible evidence and could not rely on disputed documents and hearsay to secure inheritance rights.<\/p>\n
The other judges on the bench were Justices Evrol Mariette Peters and Latifah Tahar, who ordered SSL and YKC to pay RM50,000 in costs to the nine respondents.<\/p>\n
The dispute concerned the estate of the businessman, who died intestate in 2017, leaving behind assets estimated at RM14.4 million.<\/p>\n
The appellants sought to be declared beneficiaries of the estate, but the High Court in Alor Setar had earlier found their claims unproven.<\/p>\n
Affirming that decision, Kamal said SSL remained legally married to another man, SK, from 1973 until his death in 1997, with no evidence that the marriage had ever been dissolved.<\/p>\n
He said SSL and SK continued their relationship and even had a fifth child together in 1987, contradicting her claim that she had entered into a customary marriage with the deceased in 1976.<\/p>\n
The bench also found that amending YKC\u2019s birth certificate to name the deceased as his father was procedurally defective because it did not comply with the requirement for a joint application by the mother under the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1957.<\/p>\n
Kamal said SSL\u2019s decision not to testify was also significant because she was the central figure in the marriage and paternity claims.<\/p>\n
The court agreed with the trial judge that an adverse inference could be drawn from this as her evidence would likely not have supported the appellants\u2019 case.<\/p>\n
The bench also noted that the appellants failed to produce DNA evidence to establish YKC\u2019s biological relationship with the deceased, despite having the opportunity.<\/p>\n
Kamal said the respondents had presented consistent and credible evidence, while the appellants had failed to discharge the legal burden required to prove their claims.<\/p>\n
Joshua Kevin and Leng Wie Mun appeared for the respondents, while Irham Redzuan, Samsul Nizam Sohhimi and Ainunhawa Azhar represented the appellants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Court of Appeal judges said the disputed documents and hearsay were insufficient to prove inheritance rights. (File…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1114173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3093],"tags":[51,37013,303757,3908,42113,35794,474,3303,63676,4769,303758,2499,16,15],"class_list":["post-1114172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-court-of-appeal","tag-customary-marriage","tag-dna","tag-estate","tag-evidence","tag-finance","tag-inheritance","tag-intestate","tag-kedah","tag-paternity","tag-personal-finance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116992051148459004","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1114172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1114173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1114172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1114172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1114172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}