A 14-year-old British girl, grieving the sudden and unexpected loss of her father, has also been denied her £500,000 inheritance by a Dubai court.
Pedro Dos Santos, a former HSBC banker, had left the generous provision for Paris Shahravesh in his Will. However, shortly after his sudden death of a heart attack, his new wife, Mrs Al Hammadid, 42, filed papers to the Dubai court intimating that the young benefactor was actually Christian.
This meant that under Sharia law Dos Santos’ express wishes could not be carried out as only Muslims can inherit from other Muslims.
Instead, Mrs Al Hammadi filed papers in the UAE to pay the remaining £500,000 to herself, completely cutting her husband’s daughter out of the inheritance.
According to the form of Sharia, only those actively practising Islam can inherit. The semantics and meaning around the Sharia wording will now be scrutinised as the disinherited daughter’s mother, Laleh Shahravesh, 55, looks to appeal the decision and retrieve her daughter’s entitlement.
According to Lelah Shahravesh, her daughter is a Muslim and has always been a member of the Islamic faith. She told the court that the information they had been fed was incorrect yet consistent with systematic attempts to destabilise the relationship between Dos Santos and his daughter.
Lelah Shahravesh, mother of disinherited Paris Shahravesh, claimed Al Hammadi’s misinformation was the last in a long-line of previous attempts to distance her daughter from her father, claiming:
“She [Mrs Al Hammadi] made every effort to isolate Pedro from our daughter during his life and now she is trying to exclude her after his death. It is beyond sad.”
However, Mrs Al Hammadi, wife of Pedro Dos Santos and the person set to inherit his daughter’s money insists that the decision was made according to UAE law and not a result of her own actions:
“I am Muslim, Pedro was a Muslim but Paris is Christian. This is not my decision. It’s the court’s decision, according to UAE law.”
The disharmony between the warring wives has been increasing in recent years, reaching an ugly cliamx in March this year when Mrs Shahravesh was the first British person to be sentenced under Dubai’s newly formed cyber crime laws after she called her ex husband’s new wife, Mrs Al Hammandi, a horse on social media.
Following the Dubai wedding of Dos Santos to wife Al Hammadi, Mrs Shahravesh was arrested at the airport on March 10th as she attempted to escort her daughter back to London. Since then, Shahravesh served a 30-day sentence.
Given the history of hatred between the families, it is clear that the appeal is likely to throw up a myriad of contentious issues.
Have you faced similar contentious probate issues because a Will contradicted Sharia laws?
