JANICE NG WAN FONG v 1. ) NG POH LAN 2. ) FOONG PEK WEI 3. ) FOONG PEK SAN 4. ) HARTININGSIH 5. ) PAWS ANIMAL WELFARE SOCIETY

Case Significance

Instructive on the limits of striking out under Order 18 rule 19 and on the boundary between the civil courts' supervisory power over probate obtained by alleged concealment and the Syariah jurisdiction over the estate of a person who converted to Islam.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam concerns an application to strike out a suit that sits at the delicate intersection of the civil and Syariah jurisdictions in estate matters. The plaintiff, a daughter of the deceased, challenged a grant of probate obtained by the first defendant on the strength of a will the deceased had executed in 2019, in which the plaintiff and her mother were not named as beneficiaries; the named beneficiaries included the deceased's siblings and an animal welfare organisation, PAWS Animal Welfare Society. The plaintiff's case was that the will was null and void because the deceased had converted to Islam in 2022 and was buried in an Islamic cemetery, so that on his death the estate had to be distributed according to Islamic law (faraid) rather than under a will made before his conversion, and she alleged concealment and misrepresentation in the obtaining of the probate. The defendants applied under Order 18 rule 19(1)(b) and (d) of the Rules of Court 2012 to strike out the claim, contending that its subject matter fell within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Syariah Court under Article 121(1A) of the Federal Constitution and that the action was frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of process. The court, per Datin Asmah binti Musa JC, dismissed the strike-out application. It held that striking out is a drastic remedy to be invoked only in plain and obvious cases, and that the suit raised legitimate and substantial issues of law and fact, in particular whether the defendants were aware of the deceased's conversion and whether the grant of probate had been procured through material non-disclosure or misrepresentation, which required oral evidence and cross-examination. The court emphasised that its decision did not encroach on the Syariah jurisdiction but affirmed that the civil courts retain supervisory powers over probate where fraud or concealment is alleged, and it directed the matter to proceed to trial. The judgment is instructive on the limits of striking out and on the boundary between civil probate supervision and Syariah jurisdiction over the estate of a convert.