By BarefootLawyers.
Nantongo got married to her first love Bakasimba immediately after graduation. Unfortunately, their marriage was hell on earth. They quarreled constantly and then he started coming home late and beating her while drunk.
Nantongo left him on one of those nights when he was out drinking and forgot about him. One night she received a call from their former LC who was Bakasimba’s friend ‘mbu’ Bakasimba had been knocked on his way from the bar at 3am and died. Nantongo thought it was a trick to ‘get her back’ and ignored it. When she returned to their village on Christmas, she fouind out that Bakasimba had really died and was buried. When she asked if he had left anything for their child, she was told that all the property was distributed, and the relatives received their share and even his parents got something. Nantongo wants to know if she can challenge this because her daughter missed out.
WHAT DOES THE LAW SAY?
if a person dies without leaving a will (we say they have died intestate), then their property must be distributed by a person authorized by the court to do this.
The law allows the family members to sit down and choose the person best suited to distribute the property fairly. This person is called an administrator of the estate. Once this person is chosen, they have to distribute the property within 6 months and take a report to court about how they did it. They should also search for any people who are entitled to receive this property such as children, a spouse etc using any reasonable means like radio, and newspaper adverts where possible.
If these people cannot be found or they do not come forward, then the administrator can go ahead and distribute the property and inform the court about how they did it. Once this is completed, nothing can be done if a person comes up years later to demand for a share of property that was already distributed as long as there was no fraud or unfairness in informing and telling them to come forward so that they could claim a share of the property. So there is nothing Nantogo can do to claim for what was distributed when she knew the Bakasimba had already died.
📷: Unsplash
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