Judge rules Golda Bechal was of sound mind when she left her fortune to Chinese restaurant owners

Earlier on this blog, I discussed the will contest initiated by Mayfair millionaire, Golda Bechal’s nieces who were trying to prove that their aunt lacked testamentary capacity when she left her £10 million fortune to Chinese restaurant owners Kim Sing and Bee Lian Man.

Here is the resolution of this contest from Elderly Briton leaves fortune to Chinese restaurant owner, news.yahoo.com, Dec 7, 2007:

The family of a wealthy British pensioner who left her entire fortune to the owners of a Chinese restaurant failed Friday in a legal bid to have her will declared invalid.***

[A] judge at London’s High Court ruled that the testament, made in 1994, remained valid when Bechal died in 2004, aged 88, leaving a portfolio of commercial properties to her long-standing “best friends”.***

“In my judgment, on the balance of probabilities, Mrs Bechal had testamentary capacity[,]***” said judge Donald Rattee.***

Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) and Rebekah Booth, Melanie Casner and Rickie Cayton (J.D. Candidates, Texas Tech University School of Law), for bringing this article to my attention.