Paternity already revealed<\/p>\n
But Slattery said the court had \u201calready dealt with the issue of Cheng\u2019s paternity\u201d, and DNA testing had \u201cconfirmed that Cheng is the nephew of Jian\u201d. The reason for further testing was unclear.<\/p>\n
The court had ordered the parties to undertake DNA testing in August 2023, using DNA from the deceased\u2019s relatives and not his own body tissue. The results \u201creturned a 99.9 per cent probability that Cheng was related to the applicants\u201d, the judge said.<\/p>\n
In October 2023, the court declared that Cheng was a child of the deceased and made orders allowing Cheng to administer his father\u2019s estate.<\/p>\n
Slattery said the deceased\u2019s brother and mother \u201cdid not challenge the results of the DNA testing at the time\u201d, nor did they seek to exercise any appeal rights.<\/p>\n
Li had admitted obtaining the ear sample from his brother, Slattery said, and pleaded guilty to improperly interfering with a corpse<\/a>. He was convicted in late 2023 and fined $1500.<\/p>\n Cheng, as senior next of kin, would have had to grant permission to remove the tissue sample<\/a>. He had not done so.<\/p>\n The judge said there was no utility in making the order sought by Li and his mother. DNA testing had already been conducted, and even if Li brought future proceedings on behalf of his mother, it was \u201cunlikely to be disputed\u201d that Quin was the deceased\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n In addition, the evidence would \u201cmost likely not be admissible \u2026 as it was obtained illegally\u201d.<\/p>\n Succession cases increasing<\/p>\n Filings in the NSW Supreme Court\u2019s succession and probate list, including disputes over wills and estates, have increased in recent years. In 2020, 1171 matters were filed, compared with 1460 in 2024.<\/p>\n University of NSW Professor Prue Vines, an expert in will and estate law, said a \u201cstriking\u201d feature of state-based laws dealing with the division of an estate when a person died without a will was the primacy given to spouses.<\/p>\n \u201cIf there is a spouse, and any children [of the deceased] are children of the spouse, then the whole estate will go to the spouse,\u201d Vines said. This assumed the spouse would look after the children.<\/p>\n If there were children from other relationships, the spouse would receive a basic share called a statutory entitlement \u2013 now more than $590,000 in NSW, but the figure is adjusted for inflation \u2013 and any remainder would be \u201cdivided between the spouse and the children\u201d.<\/p>\n In the absence of a spouse, any children were first in line, followed by parents and siblings. Debts and taxes were deducted first.<\/p>\n If nobody down the line to first cousins survived the deceased, the estate would go to the Crown. More distant relatives could apply to the Crown for a share.<\/p>\n \u201cThat pattern more or less fits the general cultural expectation in Australia, that the nuclear family will be the central people who will inherit,\u201d Vines said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t work for Indigenous people … [or] some other cultures where they have a very extended family that\u2019s very connected,\u201d Vines said. NSW<\/a> now allows the customary law of an Indigenous deceased to be applied.<\/p>\n Vines said the rising number of succession cases may mirror the increase in the population via immigration, and the \u201cvast majority\u201d of wills were not contested.<\/p>\n