Court upholds will donation of €14m

A COUPLE who run a Chinese restaurant in Essex were given the go-ahead by the High Court yesterday to keep the £10 million (€14m) one of their elderly and long-standing friends left them on her death.

When Golda “Goldie” Bechal died in January 2004 she bequeathed virtually her entire estate, made up of various business and property interests across the south east, to Kim Sing Man and his wife Bee Lian Man.

The only other significant beneficiaries under two wills signed in May and August of 1994 were a number of charities.

A group of Ms Bechal’s nieces and nephews challenged the wills claiming their aunt, who was nearly 89 when she died, was so mentally frail at the time of signing the wills that they were invalid.

But Judge Donald Rattee ruled in London that Ms Bechal knew what she was doing when she made the bequest, and ruled that the Mans of Great Leighs, Chelmsford, Essex, were entitled to keep the money.

Ms Rattee Bechal, was a “sad and lonely” widow, and regarded Bee Lian Man as the “daughter she would have dearly liked to have had”.

On a form on which the will was written she described the Mans, who have three children, as her “best friends”.

During the case Kim Sing Man, told the court that Ms Bechal had once described her family to him as a “bunch of hooligans“, adding that she believed they were after her money.