Amanah Raya Berhad

On the court record

A trustee corporation litigating the validity of wills, estate administration and beneficiary standing under the Probate and Administration Act 1959, including the Syariah/Civil jurisdictional line over a hibah gift.

Amanah Raya Berhad is a trustee corporation whose business is the administration of estates and trusts, and it appears in the corpus in litigation over the validity of wills, the administration of deceased estates and the standing of beneficiaries — as respondent and defendant across the High Court, Court of Appeal and Federal Court.

A central strand concerns the reach of an estate administrator's role and who may sue on an estate's behalf. In one matter the plaintiffs sought to have a will declared invalid, alleging forgery, undue influence and want of due execution; the trial judge upheld the will as valid, and on appeal the question was the extent to which an appellate court should interfere with those findings. In a related striking-out under Order 18 rule 19(1)(a), the court considered the locus standi of beneficiaries — whether section 59 of the Probate and Administration Act 1959 is an absolute bar to beneficiaries commencing an action on behalf of the estate, or whether they retain a "residuary equity" to act in special circumstances under the Al Rashidy Kassim line of authority.

The corporation has also litigated at the intersection of land and succession. One matter combined the removal of a private caveat and priorities with the validity of a hibah (an inter vivos gift) and an unregistered transfer of land "under love and affection", raising whether the validity of the gift fell within the jurisdiction of the Syariah Court or the Civil Court. Other proceedings were procedural — striking-out applications under Order 18 rule 19 targeting counterclaims and statements of claim against the corporation, argued in both English and Malay — and, at the Federal Court, a contract question on whether a consent judgment created mutual, interdependent promises such that one party could not be released without releasing the other under sections 53 and 55 of the Contracts Act 1950.