A WILL FROM GOD? UNITY DOW’S SUSPICION:
Disputed Will planted at her place? Says the dead man’s Will mysteriously appeared on her table in 2021 She was the defendants’ lawyer seven years ago
Specially-elected Member of Parliament Dr Unity Dow (63) says she does not know how a document purporting to be the Will of deceased wealthy farmer Abdull and his wife Doreen Joseph, landed on her table.
The Will, signed in 2003, is what Dawn Masenya has been looking for in the past nine years in the case in which she has dragged her aunt Shereen Pandor and her children to court.
This is after the current Minister of Labour and Home Affairs Anna Mokgethi, in her capacity as Abudll’s executrix and lawyer, showed the family a Will signed in 2010 by Abdull alone in which Masenya and her siblings were left out.
Only Shereen and her children were to inherit the estate of Abdull worth millions according to the 2010 Will. This is despite Abdull and Doreen having two daughters, Yolinda Masenya who is Dawn’s mother and Shereen. Yolinda died in 2002, her mother in 2008 while the old man
Abdull breathed his last in 2012. Since then, it has been court battle after another between Dawn, her aunt, cousins, and Mokgethi. Dawn has been relentless, suggesting that the 2010 Will was fake and manipulated and that though not certain, there exists another Will.
The matter has been dragging before the court since 2013. In October 2021, Unity Dow found a 2003 Will on her table and she informed the Master of the High Court about it.
Having been a Judge of the High Court for 11 years and a lawyer for 40 years, Dow was familiar with what ought to happen with the information on her hands. Finally breaking her silence on the matter in court this week, Dow said she was terrified and shocked that her housekeeper found her literally shaking. “I was looking for a document that I had been working on when I saw it, I had been working on that desk and I had not seen it before, I do not know where it came from,” Dow said of the Will.
Dow told the court that her law firm, Dow & Associates had at one point represented Shereen and her children in court but was not at liberty to tell what was discussed with her clients. She told the court that she cannot tell with certainty if Shereen and her children knew of the existence of the 2003 Will.
“I do not recall them telling me that they know of any other Will. I did not receive any other Will from the defendants either and even if I had, I would have not kept it because all documents are returned to the client once we (are) done.
“But one thing is for sure, that Will has not been sitting on my table for seven years because that is how long I last dealt with the matter. When I was reading about the matter in newspapers, I never saw myself connected to the case. I do not know if it was dropped there or came from God,” she said Dow added that at the time the Will mysteriously surfaced, she had been feeling like she was under surveillance as if her phone was tapped and she was being followed. “I am only speculating but that is why when I found it, I was terrified, I thought to myself, there will be headlines about me suppressing a Will,” Dow said.