Tutwa Ngulube had many children out of wedlock
AN administrator of late lawyer Tutwa Ngulube’s estate has submitted in court that women are coming up claiming to have had children with her late brother.
Ms Tawanda Ngulube submits that one of the women is actually married and the child she claims was fathered by Mr Ngulube was born while the same woman was in her current marriage.
She submits that this scenario made it difficult to ascertain the truthfulness of the claims by the mothers as the children they claim were fathered by Mr Ngulube were not known by any members of the Ngulube family.
This is in a matter in which Catherine Kuntepa, a woman who submitted in court that she a guardian of Mr Ngulube’s five children, sued Mr Ngulube’s wife, Glenda Sokontwe and Ms Ngulube, as administrators.
Ms Kuntepa wants the Lusaka High Court to order the two administrators to render an inventory of Mr Ngulube’s estate and also an order for full and fair distribution of Mr Ngulube’s estate to the deceased’s children she is keeping.
However, Ms Ngulube has contended that the properties cannot be distributed to the beneficiaries in question until all the estate for Mr Ngulube are collected.
“We are unable to distribute the properties to the named beneficiaries until the executor’s year is completed to allow us to gather and collect all the estate of the deceased for the benefit of all the beneficiaries”.
Ms Ngulube adds that Mr Ngulube left landed property, vehicles, shares and the money held in his bank accounts, assets estimated at K20 million and that administrators have also paid out K1million in liabilities left by the lawyer, who was survived by a wife, children, a parent and dependants.
“We begun the process of identifying the beneficiaries under the estate of the deceased as it turned out that the deceased had many children outside wedlock, who were not known to the family of the deceased,” she submits.
Ms Ngulube submits that the procedure of identifying beneficiaries became extra complicated when it was learnt that one woman who claimed that the Mr Ngulube fathered her child is married.
It was then that a consultation process with the office of the Administrator General started on how to handle the estate.
Ms Ngulube submits that the estate could therefore not be distributed until it was ascertained that the claims from the mothers regards genuineness of the paternity of their children.
She adds that Mr Ngulube left a huge estate comprising 20 landed properties and that the process of gathering the assets took a considerable time while lawyers have been engaged to register the letters of administration against all the properties of the deceased as required by law.
Because of this scenario, administers are unable to distribute the properties to the named beneficiaries until the executor’s year is completed to allow us to gather and collect all the estate of the deceased for the benefit of all the beneficiaries.
(Mwebantu, Monday, 4th March, 2024)