When siblings fight over assets of a dementia-stricken parent

Case of brothers getting elderly mum to make 3 different wills holds lessons on legacy planning

- Tan Ooi Boon

Two brothers were so hell-bent on getting their hands on their dementia-stricken mother's assets that they took the frail woman to see doctors at least six times so that they could get her to sign legal documents that benefited them.

The elderly woman, who had already made a will, was cajoled into signing two others, as well as a lasting power of attorney, a deed to transfer her property and a statutory declaration all within six months.

The series of paperwork was triggered when the fourth son discovered that his mother had been induced to sign a will in 2005 that left all her assets to her eldest son. She had done so because she was "disconcerted" that the younger son wanted to mortgage one of the family's properties.

But after her health worsened in 2016, the fourth son turned the tables by getting his mum to make another will in the following year to name him as the sole beneficiary. He assumed that this would invalidate the original one.

When the eldest brother found out about this new will, he quickly got the woman to make yet another will to supersede the second one and so uphold his entitlement to her assets, which comprised one of the family's three houses.

This back and forth went on despite a doctor stating plainly that their mother probably did not know what she was doing during that six-month period.

But this did not stop the eldest son from trying to get his mother to transfer one of the houses to him. However, the attempt failed as his younger brother kept the title deed. To get around this problem, he thought it was a good idea to get his mother to make a statutory declaration to falsely state that the deed was lost.

He claimed that his younger brother was no angel, too, for trying to destroy the third will after the latter's wife asked to see it. But when the document was returned to him, he was upset to find it "wet" and that their mother's thumbprint was barely discernible.