When family feuds go all the way to the highest courts

Former US president Donald Trump has sued his niece Mary Trump and the New York Times. The former president claims that his niece gave confidential information to the newspaper contrary to a settlement agreement in a previous suit in which it was agreed that the niece would not disclose information relating to Mr Trump’s taxes and other personal information. 

Mr Trump is claiming compensation of US$100 million. Ms Trump herself previously sued her uncle, the former president, and other family members of cheating her out of her inheritance from her grandfather’s estate.

Long before the Trumps, another family of a president had a famous legal case of their own. In 1875, Abraham Lincoln’s widow Mary Lincoln found herself in a legal suit brought by her only surviving child. Robert Lincoln, her eldest son, petitioned a court in Chicago for a declaration that his mother was insane and needed protection and care. Under Illinois law, this required a jury trial to determine insanity before committal to a sanitarium. Mary Lincoln was unaware that a public trial awaited her. She was forced into court on May 19, 1875. 

The jury heard 17 witnesses, including Robert Lincoln, who testified that his mother was insane. The jury returned a verdict that Mary Lincoln was insane after deliberating for about 10 minutes. However, Mary Todd Lincoln was released from the sanitarium four months later. A second trial over the same matter concluded in 1876 that she was sane.

This issue has been the subject of debate for years, with many stating that Ms Lincoln was the victim of abuse of the legal system by her son, who was a lawyer and was believed to have wanted his mother declared insane so as to control her property. Some medical experts believe Ms Lincoln’s ailment was no more than what is today known as the personality disorder of narcissism.

A decade after this, another famous family was embroiled in a lawsuit. But this time money and wealth was right in the middle of it. Cornelius Vanderbilt is probably the first person referred to by the word “tycoon” in the United States.

Famous business family

At his death in 1877, the railroad mogul left an estate worth $100 million, the equivalent of about $3 billion today. He had 12 children. Vanderbilt’s will bequeathed to each of his eight daughters about $500,000, $1 million to a university that now carries his name, and all the rest of his estate of about $95 million to his eldest son William, thus effectively disinheriting all his other sons. Two of the sons and two daughters contested the will as unfair and sought equal distribution of the estate. The court upheld the tycoon’s testamentary freedom to dispose of his property as he wished and dismissed the challenge.

In the United Kingdom, another famous business family that found its dispute in court are the Barclays. Before his death this year, David Barclay and his twin brother Fredrick Barclay jointly owned vast business interests. Following David’s death, Frederick and his children sued his late brother’s sons for commercial espionage.

The claim was that the sons had installed listening devices which covertly recorded Fredrick Barclay’s business discussions in the family’s hotel in London. The suit was withdrawn in June 2021 and the family put up a statement that the dispute was behind them.

Another family with vast interests in the United Kingdom may need to emulate the Barclays by resolving their differences amicably. The Hinduja conglomerate was established by Parmanand Hinduja in 1914 in India. Today, it is an empire that has interest in banking, transport, energy, automobiles, technology and media in 38 countries. Parmanand Hinduja was survived by four sons who now run the empire estimated at 16 billion sterling pounds by the Sunday Times in 2020.

In 2014, the four sons signed an agreement which stated that the assets held by each brother belonged to all the others and that each would appoint the other brothers as executors of their respective estates on death.

In June 2020 the eldest brother and group chairman Srichand Hinduja, and his daughter, sued the other brothers in the United Kingdom over control of the Hinduja bank, which is established in Switzerland and whose shareholding was in his name. The suit sought a declaration that the letter was worthless in law and could not be used as either a power of attorney or a will. 

A judge held that the letter had no effect for the time being and that Srichand’s interest would be managed by his daughter during his illness. The judge noted that the family had other cases in Switzerland and confidential proceedings in Jersey at the time of the suit.

Mandela family dispute

In India, another sibling dispute between the sons of the late Dhirubhai Ambani got so intense that no less than the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee termed it a matter of national interest that needed resolution. Mukesh and Anil Ambani found themselves as chairman/managing director and vice chairman respectively and owners of the Reliance Industries Group in India upon the death of their father in intestacy.

The Ambani legacy in that company was worth billions of dollars when the brothers began to feud. The elder one, Mukesh, attempted to oust his brother from the board of the company. Anil then filed a defamation lawsuit in New York against Mukesh for an interview the latter gave to a newspaper. This suit was later withdrawn.

In 2005, their mother brokered a deal in which the group’s companies were de-merged and each brother given separate divisions to themselves. This was approved by the court despite opposition by other shareholders in the company. But even the demerger did not solve their feud. They sued each other all the way to the Indian Supreme Court on a case about oil prices, which Anil’s company lost. 

Again their mother brokered peace with a Kenyan-style handshake agreement by the brothers not to compete in each other’s businesses.

Africa is not without similar examples. In South Africa, Winnie Mandela challenged the will of her divorced husband and former president Nelson Mandela for having been left out of a bequest regarding one home in Qunu village. This was dismissed. They also had a family dispute when Mandla, the leader of the clan, exhumed three of the former president’s children’s bodies from the burial site to a different place. 

The family challenged this and the court ordered the re-interment of the bodies in their original place in Qunu.

SM Otieno burial case 

Kenya has seen its share of family disputes ranging from the burial dispute in 1987 known famously as the SM Otieno case, which was about the burial site of the top lawyer. The dispute pitted his widow against his brother and clan. 

The court held that an African man could not divest himself from association with the tribe of his father and that he, therefore, had to be buried in his ancestral village. 

Several other cases involve challenges to wills of parents where siblings even challenge each other’s paternity and entitlement to benefit from their parents’ estate.

It does appear that the Trump family is not alone in converting intra-family legal feuds into litigation.

Note: In the previous column published on September 19, 2021, I incorrectly stated that the Puttasamy case had over 500 pages. The correct statement is that it had about 1,500 pages because the correct number is 1448 pages. Apologies to the readers for the error.

The writer is Head of Legal at Nation Media Group PLC