OBTAINING PROBATE IS TEDIOUS. BUT I’VE JUMPED THROUGH the hoops before, as executor of Paw Paw’s will, and I know what to do. It should be easy: the only thing in Aunty Theresa’s Australian will is a property in South Perth, an established, upmarket riverside neighbourhood. She sold off all her other Perth assets, over the years, or Dad sold them for her, and I’m fortunate to have the least complicated of Aunty’s wills to manage. Theresa bought her apartment in 1971, and now her investment of a few thousand dollars is worth over half a million and she wanted the proceeds shared between my brothers, Angela, my mum and me.
A couple, Allan and Maria, have rented Aunty’s apartment since the early ’90s. I call them and ask that they maintain payments into Theresa’s account as usual. But once probate comes through and I pay a visit to Westpac bank, I find no rent money in Aunty’s accounts.
Dad picks up my call. ‘Oh, dear daughter. The tenants like me. I own the apartment. It was your Aunty’s will. It is not your place to make decisions. You cannot and will not outsmart me.’
And just like that, I am plunged into a hell I thought I had escaped long ago, one I ran from and hid from in my career – and in my children, my husband, my friends – but there it is, here it is, the dragon’s jaws open to swallow me, the tiger exhausted beneath the jungle canopy. The dragon circles and swoops; there was never going to be any escape.
I put the kids to bed, inhale half a bottle of wine, call John’s dad – the magistrate – and cry. ‘What do I do, Len? He’s my dad, but Aunty left the apartment to my brothers and me, Angela and my mum – probably knowing Dad would never look after any of us.’
Ever since Francis walked on Len’s back, claiming he was a ‘Chinese doctor’, and ever since Francis called Len day and night for legal advice that he never followed, Len has been rather unimpressed, so there is little to no convincing required for my father-in-law to help me. There was also the time Francis took Len out to a Chinese vegetarian restaurant where the chicken, beef and pork were all tofu; Len never got over that.
Len says my best bet is to file against Dad to recoup the rent, which if nothing else will keep him busy and off my case while I sell the apartment.
I fly secretly to Perth. It’s only a secret from Dad, and it feels weird because usually I’m flying to Perth to see him but, instead, I must deal with the tenants in person. The little girl in me struggles with the weight and complexity of who we are to each other: I feel such a deep sense of obligation to him but he doesn’t seem to have the same dutiful concern for me. The woman in me clings to a moral compass, magnetically twitching an arrow to ‘right’.
I relate the whole Manila episode to my brothers and former stepmother, Angela, who is my host tonight at her rented villa in the fashionable suburb of Subiaco. She’s happier than I’ve ever seen her, softened. She has prepared five dishes for our dinner, and regardless, I’m grateful for the effort. I drink wine and relax.
I’m looking out for Angela’s interest in Aunty Theresa’s will, but I cannot believe that’s the only reason she embraced me when I arrived. The fact that Theresa left both Francis’s ex-wives part of her estate is not lost on anyone. Great-Grandfather left First Mother behind in China and abandoned Number Two Wife and Number Three Wife for heaven, and Theresa wasn’t letting that happen again.
We four share stories about Dad. We could write a book – and maybe I will one day, I think.
My brother Jerome has his feet up on the couch. He had a minor motorcycle accident yesterday. Angela picked me up and we rushed to the hospital because the only one he wanted to see was me, to sit there silently through injections and examinations. I held his hand just like I held Mama, Ng Yuk’s, hand decades ago.
When Ng Yuk, Dad’s mother, refused to go for blood tests in Hong Kong, I would go with her. She couldn’t speak English but to say, ‘Your daddy, no good. No good.’ And I could not speak Chinese but to say, ‘Mm goi. Thank you.’ We held hands as nurses took blood. ‘Good boy,’ Ng Yuk said to me in English. ‘Good boy.’ I watched Kwa blood fill the vial. Slowly rising.
When I was a teenager Mama celebrated her 86th birthday and Aunty Theresa reserved an entire floor of a Hong Kong restaurant to fit the hundreds of guests from around the world, Kwas paying their respects to the last living wife of Ying Kam. Ng Yuk wasn’t actually eighty-six but it’s custom to add a year for each generation after you, so she was really only eighty-three. I wasn’t long out of primary school, and of all the guests, she wanted me to sit at her table. At her funeral a year later, I stood behind David in a long line of mourners to view Ng Yuk’s open casket. Her frail body and tiny feet were finally at peace. Aunty Theresa asked for donations of blankets for the poor rather than flowers and, after the Catholic service, immediate family, like me, attended a Buddhist one where a monk cut the throat of a live chicken to protect Theresa as next of kin, after the almanac revealed it was double death day. I watched the red liquid drip onto the altar and pool on the floor.
I lodge Magistrates Court documents over Dad’s rent collection, and predictably he is not happy. His text messages are like tiny swords.
I have Aunty’s ashes in Melbourne and hope to hold a service somewhere in Australia once Dad has settled down. For now, all I can do is steel myself while he’s on the warpath.
‘I have plenty up my sleeve,’ he rants. ‘Don’t think you know me. I will teach you.’
After a while, Dad perhaps becomes irritated by my numb responses – I am behind in his game – and out of sheer frustration throws me a bone. It’s buried deep in a ten-screen-long text.
There is an ABSOLUTE CAVEAT on the title of your Aunty’s apartment. This PROHIBITS you from selling it.
What?! That can’t be right. I do some yoga stretches to help me absorb this information and call the titles office from a forward fold position.
‘No, Madam, I cannot disclose the details of the title without proof of your grant of probate or evidence of your interest in the property.’
I stand upright and book another flight to Perth, this time to go to the land titles office.
‘Hmmm, let me see.’ A helpful elderly man looks at me over his spectacles. ‘It’ll just take me a minute.’ He shuffles behind shelves and emerges with a folder. ‘Yes. There is a caveat on that property. A title cannot be transferred with a caveat.’ He smiles sympathetically.
‘How did the caveat get there?’
The bespectacled man hands me a form, upon which is Dad’s signature, dated three weeks before Theresa died.
There’s no record of how Dad managed to prove a caveatable interest in his sister’s property – maybe he took an old bank statement with his name on it, or old letters from Theresa mentioning maintenance – and it’s at the discretion of the titles office clerk to decide if a caveat is warranted before they approve it. You only need to provide proof of an interest in the property then they record the caveat but not why it was placed.
Dad texts me. You can never win. I am the King. It’s all mine.
I want the bitterness to wash from me to the furthest corners of existence, and most of all I want to relinquish my executorship. But if I die, John is the next in line, then Adrian, then Jerome, then five other people before any mention of Dad at all. Theresa did not want him in charge.
Dad gets even more furious when he goes to collect rent from Aunty’s tenants and finds an empty apartment. He then sends essay-length messages on my birthday. I read his messages multiple times and feel depression creeping in.
Dad sends physical letters too. They arrive by the dozen: news articles highlighted in yellow to show Dad ‘knows best’, pages of prose to show Dad is ‘all powerful’, and notes to tell me, You will never win.
I resolve to fight back with love, compiling a beautiful hardcover hundred-page photo book filled with pictures of Dad and me and his grandchildren. This tactic helped to get Mum well, so maybe it’ll work with Dad. I write of family and harmony, and Adrian delivers it to Dad.
Please lift the caveat. Please let me do what is right. Please let me be free to do the job Theresa has asked of me. You have four beautiful grandchildren, three loving children. Look around you. We don’t need to fight.
Saying this in writing or in person has no effect. Dad’s silence is stony, the dragon circling lower, aiming for the tiger’s jugular. The tiger is lying down now, almost resolute that death would be easier than this torment.
Dad sends another letter. I leave it unopened for days. When I read it at last, the letter informs me that my father is suing me in the Supreme Court of Western Australia.
Kwa v Kwa
It’s hard to breathe. It’s hard not to breathe. I stare at the page as though I can alter the words somehow. My forehead pours with sweat, and that night I have trouble sleeping.
The following morning, when I peer into the bathroom mirror, I see that a thick sprig of my hair has turned grey overnight. The dragon hurtles towards the tiger, who can no longer hide. She searches for an exit and sees no option but to draw breath and face the flames.
No one seems surprised that he has escalated matters to court – of course he has. But I am. This is Dad who painted my bicycle with me, Dad who lugged my piano on stage to sing at school, Dad who I Wombled and collected junk with, Dad who I fired a rifle with, Dad who drove me and my friends to parties and who boasted about me behind my back to anyone who would listen – whenever I overheard, I would swell with pride. Dad taught me how to use a soldering iron, a hammer, pliers, a cement mixer and an electric saw. He built me a tractor-tyre swing and found me a trampoline, a swing set and a ping-pong table. He had a lolly cabinet just for me.
Despite the reality of the situation, I don’t accept that Dad and I are about to go head-to-head in court. My heart is breaking. I am a little girl crushed.
At our Magistrate’s hearing Dad says, ‘My daughter is confused. She is young. I am upholding the will of my sister, and I ask that this trial be held over until the will is settled. It is before the Supreme Court.’
My chest tightens. I’m going to throw up. In the grip of a panic attack, I slide open a glass door, step outside and lean on a wall to steady myself. The garden sways. I breathe the fresh air into my lungs – deep, deep breaths – but I begin to hyperventilate. I sit cross-legged, lie down, sit up again, rock, just working it through. It’s going to be okay. At home, I have a hot shower. The water rushes over me. It’s going to be okay. I fend off dragon snarls.
Dad has a reputation with Perth judges as a serial litigant, but no matter what a nuisance he is, they’ve never been able to strike him out. Dad does win sometimes, so he is still part of the furniture. He dines out on being the first man to represent himself in the High Court of Australia since land rights activist Eddie Mabo won his historic case.
Acutely aware of the emotional toll this is all taking on me, John’s dad finds me a lawyer: Johnson Kitto, a trusted, upstanding man whom people call on public radio for advice. My father-in-law gives him a resounding stamp of approval. ‘Kitto was always straight. Always fair. I trust him.’ Kitto takes my case and is undeterred and easily able to separate emotion from legal fact.
Fogged with fear and memories pushing aggressively forth to mar every experience by intruding on my thoughts – The bench needs wiping; remember how you got in trouble for not wiping the bench? A child is crying; remember how you cried yourself to sleep? Hide the kitchen knives; remember how you were told your mother must not know where they are – I’m unable to comprehend this fight will ever be over.
Since Aunty died, I’ve been drowning in House of Kwa. My husband and kids are almost losing sight of me beneath the waves that roll in.
In November 2013, a preliminary Supreme Court hearing works out whether the court will allow the full Kwa v Kwa case. Kitto appears for me, and Dad appears for himself.
In ten years, Dad has been to the Supreme Court countless times: against the Bank of Western Australia, the City of Stirling, the City of Cambridge, the Barrister’s Board, the Engineers Association, pharmaceutical companies, the Australian Youth Hostels Association, and now me. Dad is confident in this familiar environment; I haven’t been here since my work-experience days.
The whole case hinges on one thing I wouldn’t have thought of in a million years. I watch in disbelief, from the public gallery of the Supreme Court, as Dad smugly tables a yellowing wad of paper – explosive ammunition the dragon has been sitting on all along. I’m horrified to hear that Theresa appointed Francis as her power of attorney in 1960, a decade and a half before I was born, to manage her Australian financial affairs.
The penny drops with the thud of a dragon foot. Dad used his power of attorney to put a caveat on the South Perth property. He took this same document to lawyers in the Philippines to contest the will there. I think I might faint.
‘Your Honour, my daughter is deluded and believes that she is in charge. I do not blame her. I only wish to guide her. You see from the document I bring to you today that, in fact, I am the sole person responsible for my dear beloved departed sister’s financial affairs.’ Dad’s hair is tousled and bow tie crooked, just like in the High Court years ago, his signature courtroom style.
‘Thank you, Mr Kwa,’ the judge says. ‘Yes, Mr Kitto?’
I cannot bear the thought of how this will end. As Kitto rises to address the judge, I leave my body, a tiger perched up on the elaborate balustrade of the viewing confine; my tail and whiskers twitch, sizing up the scaled and cunning predator below and identifying the exits.
Then Kitto hurls a stick of dynamite that blows Francis’s entire case apart.
‘Miss Theresa Kwa cancelled the POA forty years ago.’
Kitto dramatically slaps down Aunty’s letter cancelling Dad’s rights over her affairs – it proves she had second thoughts over him handling her assets and that, having come to her senses, she rescinded his power after just a few weeks. My eyes look to heaven.
‘Mimi,’ says Kitto, ‘it’s done. You won. It’s over.’
‘But Dad is an expert at appeals.’
‘No, Mimi. No, he cannot appeal. It’s been thrown out.’