VANCOUVER — A woman who was raised by an aunt and uncle, apart from her younger sisters, has won a legal fight to change their father’s will after she was denied an equal share of his estate.
When Tat Kuan Cheong died three years ago, he left $17,500 to Celina Kan, his oldest biological daughter, whom he referred to in his will as his niece, the same amount he left to his half sister and less than the $20,000 he left to a goddaughter. The remaining $683,000 was divided equally between daughters Ina and Sophia Cheong, it said.
A court can vary a will if a will-maker doesn’t adequately provide for a spouse or children, according to B.C.’s Wills, Estates and Succession Act.
A judge has the discretion based on moral norms to ensure the deceased reasonably fulfilled obligations based on “contemporary community standards,” Justice Lisa Warren wrote in siding with Kan.
The story began when Kan was four. She was taken from the family home in Macau to live in Hong Kong with her well-off aunt and uncle, a childless couple who raised her as their daughter even though they didn’t adopt her, according to the judge’s ruling.
While Kan lived in a prestigious Hong Kong neighbourhood in a spacious house with plumbing, hot water and air-conditioning, attended private school and had stylish clothes and lots of toys, her sisters shared a two-bedroom Hong Kong apartment without flush toilets, hot water, a fridge or TV, with as many as seven or eight relatives, the reasons said. Ina Cheong shared a bed with several cousins and food was sometimes scarce, it said.
Kan feared her uncle because he had assaulted his wife and she was “traumatized and confused by having been ‘given away’ as a young child,” the ruling said.
When she was 18, she moved to Toronto and supported herself through university.
Other family members, including her sisters, came to Canada after her, but Kan and Ina Cheong had a falling out and didn’t see each other until this trial, 50 years later, and she and Sophia Cheong never connected, the judge wrote.
Tat Kuan and his second wife moved to Canada in 1990 and lived in Richmond until they died, buying a house with what Sophia Cheong said was her financial assistance, although that wasn’t proven, the judgment said.
Kan maintained a close relationship with the aunt who raised her and wasn’t close with her father, not as the other two daughters were, it said.
After Tat Kuan died in April 2021, Kan wasn’t informed about the funeral.
After she was left out of her father’s will, Kan sought a three-way division of the estate. The sisters argued she was adequately provided for in the will.
Warren wrote that all witnesses were credible, with the exception of Ina Cheong, who “displayed intense animosity toward Celina” Kan without reasonable justification.
In setting out legal principles of the case, she wrote there may be “just cause” for someone to disinherit an adult child but unless a strong reason is given in the will for an unequal division, adult children should share equally in a parent’s estate.
Those reasons could relate to the size of the estate, the standard of living of the will-maker and the child, gifts made outside the will, expectations of the child and “misconduct or poor character of the claimant,” she said. None had a bearing on this case, she wrote.
Kan’s “relationship with Tat Kuan was permanently damaged by his decision to relinquish his parental role in her life when she was young. … [It] caused her immense emotional pain that has remained throughout her life,” even though he was a kind man and told Kan he did it so she could have a better life.
Her sisters’ childhood perceptions that she was privileged, caused “deep resentment” in them.
The sisters’ rejection of her and her emotional suffering from being given up by her father likely inhibited her from trying to have a closer relationship with Tat Kuan.
“She cannot be faulted for this,” Warren wrote.
She concluded: Kan’s “moral claim is a strong one and it is not negated by valid and rational reasons. I have no difficulty concluding that Tat Kuan failed to make adequate provision for Celina.”
Warren said she was mindful of interfering with Tat Kuan’s wishes but noted he “made the will without the benefit of legal advice about his moral obligation” to Kan.
