A piece by Frances Gibb, Legal Editor, in today’s Times:
The daughter of a wealthy engineer is fighting a £500,000 court battle with the Korean “domestic servant” who she claims tried to marry her father on his deathbed.
Deborah John-Woodruffe, 47, claims that Bok Soon Song, 72, was nothing more than a “live-in housekeeper” who took advantage of her dying father.
She says the former waitress tried to marry John Williams in hospital only for the pensioner to send her and the registrar packing. Soon after his death from bowel cancer in 2016, Miss Bok changed the locks on his home in Kensal Rise, northwest London, and began a claim to obtain more than £500,000 from his estate, which was worth more than £1 million.
Mr Williams, 66, died without making a will and so his assets would normally be divided between his three children, Mrs John-Woodruffe and her brothers, David and Andrew Williams.
Ms Bok, who said that Mr Williams proposed to her with the aid of a phrasebook, is suing the estate and the siblings, claiming “reasonable provision” as his cohabiting partner of 20 years. “We say they slept in the same bed until he became ill, had sexual relations and were effectively a couple,” Mr Paul Infield, counsel for Miss Bok, told Central London county court.
The hearing continues.
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