A district court has ruled that three children that late tycoon Wang Yung-ching (王永慶) had out of wedlock have blood ties to him and are therefore entitled to inherit from his estate.
In May last year, the court granted a request from Lo Wen-yuan (羅文源) and his sisters Lo Hsueh-chen (羅雪貞) and Lo Hsueh-ying (羅雪映) to “derecognize” their family ties to their adopted father, Lo Ching-chi (羅景祺), who married their mother, Lin Ming-chu (林明珠), after she split with Wang in the 1950s.
The three then filed a request in September last year for recognition of their blood ties to Wang, the founder of Formosa Plastics Group, who died in New Jersey in October 2008.
During the trial, Wang’s legitimate children refused to provide DNA samples to facilitate the court proceedings. However, the court used other methods to determine that the three were born around the time Lin and Wang were living together in 1952 and 1953.
Testimony used by the court to prove Wang’s relationship with the trio include the evidence that Wang often dined with them when they were children and that Lo Wen-yuan had been meeting his real father for 30 years.
Lo and his sisters also produced evidence that in 2004, their adopted father wrote to Wang asking him to accept the three as his blood children because their mother had died.
Although Wang did not act on the letter, he kept it in a drawer, the court said.
The ruling said the three had been willing to live without “official recognition” from Wang in consideration of his social status and had been satisfied with “private and low-profile” contact with him. Once he died, however, the court ruled, it was “human nature” for the children to claim a blood tie.
The court ruling could lead to an inheritance settlement with Wang’s legitimate children. One local newspaper estimated each could end up getting NT$1 billion (US$34.47 million).
Wang’s family has said the tycoon left a legacy of more than NT$40 billion, mostly in shares of the companies he founded.
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