27/10/2026
One house. Four owners. Nobody agrees on what to do with it.
In May, The Star asked lawyers what goes wrong when someone dies without a proper estate plan. One common answer: disagreements over inherited property. The house suddenly has several new legal owners, and they can't agree whether to sell, or for how much.
Here's how that happens. Without a will, a non-Muslim's estate follows the Distribution Act 1958. Say a man leaves his wife, two children and his mother. The wife is entitled to a quarter, the children share half, and his mother gets a quarter. That's four people with a say in one house.
And if one of them dies, their share passes to their own heirs. The lawyer described it simply: the cycle continues.
What if the house had been placed in a trust? The trust deed would already say who can live in it, whether and when it is sold, and who receives the money, and the trustee would follow it. A trust covers only what you place in it and can still be challenged, but the decision would be yours, made while you can make it.
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News Source: The Star, May 2026.
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