(Picture: When There's A Will,There Are Fewer Nasty Legal Disputes)PATRIARCH Leow Nee Chong must have been quite an avid collector. When he died in 1988, he left behind: some 300 US gold coins; more than 300 gold chains; five or six bags of Intan diamonds; at least 25 emerald, ruby and 15-carat diamond rings; and more than 200 gold-plated silver and steel watches.
There were also four properties, and a sum of $1.9 million.
But the businessman left behind no will.
His two sons handled the estate on behalf of the patriarch's wife and all the siblings, which includes four daughters. Their mother died in August 1993.
Now, Mr Leow Mei Loy has taken his younger brother Chia Then to court to account for the assets, and to share them among all six siblings.
Chia Then is counter-suing, claiming, among other things, that Mei Loy has not accounted for valuables from their dad's jewellery shop.
Court documents listed the properties as: two shophouses in Arab Street, another in North Bridge Road, and a bungalow in Mountbatten Road that was priced at $16 million in 1997.
Mei Loy, 59, through lawyers Henry Heng and Vicki Loh, is claiming that Chia Then, who is in his early 50s, kept the valuables after their father died.
According to Mei Loy, the items were previously in two large safes in the pawnshop in Arab Street.
He also seeks, among other things, an account of the $230,000 allegedly received as deposits for the sale of one Arab Street shophouse and the North Bridge Road shophouse in 1997.
He wants his brother removed as co-administrator and be replaced by his older sister Fie Yin.
But Chia Then is countering in court by wanting Mei Loy thrown out instead and replaced by youngest sister Mee Ying.
Through lawyers Cavinder Bull and Terence Seah, he is disputing his older brother's claims and notes that the suit comes in the wake of an earlier High Court order made in 1995 ordering the sale of all properties.
While the North Bridge Road shophouse and one in Arab Street were sold for a total of about $3.15 million in 1997, he has not been able to touch the other two properties, including the bungalow in Mountbatten Road where Mei Loy still lives in.
Chia Then also claims he has no access to the other shophouse in Arab Street.
He counters that Mei Loy, who once operated the jewellery shop with his father, had yet to account for and share the cash and stock from the shop after their dad died.
Last year, Chia Then applied to the High Court to enforce the 1995 sale order, to enable the sale of the remaining two properties.
The two suits are now fixed to be heard jointly. A High Court pre-trial conference before Senior Assistant Registrar Audrey Lim on Monday will be followed by another next month.
There were at least eight court cases of sibling spats over family wealth since April last year.
They include an 80-year-old woman who sued her daughter and son-in-law for more than $500,000 from the sale of a house. The suit was settled some time after her daughter, who was suffering from hypertension, died last year.
In July this year, a businessman sued his daughter and three siblings for three properties worth $9 million. The case is ongoing.
In another pending case reported last month, two sisters are locked in a court battle over who should inherit more than 20 properties left by their late mother.
Lawyer Amolat Singh believes such spats could arise from a number of factors, or even simply greed. 'Mediation might help settle matters sometimes,' he said.
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