U.K. judge upholds will leaving widow's fortune to Chinese restaurant owners

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON - Think of it as a giant tip.

A wealthy British widow wanted to repay the kindness shown to her by a couple that runs her favourite Chinese restaurant. So she left the couple the equivalent of about $21 million in her will.

Now, a High Court judge has ruled the will is legal.

Golda Bechal's 1994 will said she wanted Kim Sing Man and his wife, Bee Lian, the owners of a Chinese restaurant northeast of London, to inherit her money.

She died at age 88 in January 2004.

Bechal's five nephews and nieces asked the court to declare the will invalid, claiming their aunt was suffering from dementia.

They asked the judge to give the inheritance to them.

But Judge Donald Rattee accepted the restaurateurs' evidence that Bechal, sad and lonely after the deaths of her husband and son, became like a family member to the couple.

They went on foreign holidays together and regularly got together at their restaurant and at her apartment in Mayfair, central London.

"It was not irrational to leave the bulk of her estate to Mrs. Man, the daughter she would dearly wished to have had, and her husband," Rattee said.

Kim Sing Man remembered Bechal as a classy woman who "always enjoyed her Chinese pickled leeks and bean sprouts."

© The Canadian Press, 2007