Recently, the Hong Kong drama "Family Honor" is being broadcast, and the battle for family property by the children of the giants in the drama has made the audience addicted. Back to reality, the excitement of the inheritance competition of the Rich Chinese Family is comparable to that in the TV series.
If the grievances of the giants are the melons that people love to eat after tea and dinner, then the inheritance of the giants is a well-deserved melon heart, preserving sweetness! With the original intention of solving problems for readers and adding chaos to the giants, we present this guide to the inheritance of the giants.
The story of the nine sons and wives has lasted up half of the "Yongzheng Dynasty" and a "Step by Step", and most of the traditional Chinese rich people in reality decide on the distribution of their property before and after their deaths, such a "tradition" has increased the exposure of the heirs, increased the income of lawyers, and increased the material for the screenwriters. Law is the moral limit and the fundamental instrument in the inheritance competition guide.
Inheritance cases have become the standard of the giants, just like the bracelet that has been opened to wear it is at ease, and the inheritance that has been won in court is cherished. The two parties to the original defendants in the property dispute case are common brothers and sisters, the most famous of which is the Huo family property dispute case, the three sons of Fok Yingdong Dafang fought in court for a 20 billion inheritance, and finally reached a settlement under the mediation of the former chief executive of the Huo family, Tung Chee-hwa.
However, just when everyone thought that the wind and waves were calm, this property dispute case made new waves in the past few days. On January 11, the second-generation property dispute case of Fok Yingdong was officially heard, and the prosecution was Huo Zhenyu, the third son of Huo Yingdong, the eldest daughter Huo Liping, and the second daughter Huo Lina, and the defendant was Huo Zhenhuan, the second son of Huo Yingdong, and the two sides sued over the land of 7.6 billion yuan in Nansha.
On January 14, 2022, Hong Kong, the fourth day of the Fok Ying Tung family property dispute case.
Huo Zhenhuan believes that this matter is the father's investment and construction with the purpose of public welfare and charity, and 3.5 billion yuan of funds have been injected before and after, which is not suitable for production.
Lawyer Huo Lina said that Fok Yingdong's investment in Nansha was not entirely out of public welfare, but in business, he wanted to develop the real estate market in the mainland. The evidence they provided was in the biography of Fok Ying Tung, saying that Fok Ying Tung was banned by Britain and the United States because he was forced to sell his assets in Hong Kong cheaply because he transported important materials to the mainland, so he set his sights on the mainland.
Therefore, the prosecution asked Huo Zhenhuan to transfer this right and interest to the name of the family fund, and everyone divided it equally.
However, due to the complexity of the case, the confessions of the two sides alone are thousands of pages long, and the court will conduct a 60-day trial.
Another famous property dispute occurred between Gong Xinru, the wife of Chinachem Group founder Wang Dehui, and Gong Tingxin, the father-in-law. The two competed for 40 billion Hong Kong dollars for a legacy lasting 8 years, known as the "Century Property Dispute Case", which was heard for 172 consecutive days, setting a record for Hong Kong, and finally Gong Xinru won the lawsuit, unexpectedly died of illness the next year, leaving the second season of the Century Property Dispute.
Stanley Ho, Ai-shi Leung, Ru-sin Gong (second from right) and I.M. Lam Attended the 10th Anniversary Exhibition of the Hong Kong Women's Association
The charm of the dispute is not necessarily the size of the "target" of the heritage, but sometimes the strangeness of the content. On July 2, Hong Jinmei, the widow of the late "new horse master" Deng Yongxiang, died of lung cancer in Hong Kong, along with the most bizarre Hong Kong property dispute.
Deng Yongxiang, who has been dead for 22 years, is a Master of Cantonese Opera in Hong Kong, and before the Golden Age of Hong Kong Cinema, Cantonese Opera was half of Hong Kong's entertainment circle, and Deng Yongxiang was the top traffic star in that era. Deng Yongxiang was very good at gambling when he was young, and the money he lost before the 1960s could buy a street in Kowloon, and his first investment after quitting gambling was to buy a 1% stake in Macau Entertainment. By the time Of Tang passed away, he had left behind an inheritance of more than HK$420 million.
On August 28, 2016, Xiang's sister-in-law Hong Jinmei paid homage to Deng Yongxiang
This property dispute began when Deng Yongxiang was alive. Dissatisfied with Xiang's sister-in-law Hong Jinmei's private transfer of property to her name, Deng Yongxiang transferred the ownership of Yongxiang Mansion to four children a year before his death, leaving only a symbolic inheritance for Xiang's sister-in-law.
In April 1997, Deng Yongxiang died, and the production war between mother and son was on the verge of breaking out. The four children of the Deng family set up a spiritual hall for their father, but refused to worship their mother, and later it was rumored that Xiang Sister-in-law "snatched the corpse"... Then the battlefield of the property struggle changed from the spiritual hall to the public court, and the lawsuit for property was stopped until 2006, and finally Xiang Sister-in-law lost the lawsuit completely, and the verdict basically set her as a woman who "said the English transfer documents as an annual report and cheated her husband's signature".
Brother Xiang's sister-in-law's wedding ceremony was a sensation
The excitement of this drama of "spitting" is not only in the testimony of witnesses in the courtroom, but also outside the courtroom. For more than a year after Deng Yongxiang's death, Hong Kong Radio And ATV's daily prime-time people's livelihood programs were all disputed by the Deng family, and many post-90s in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao grew up watching the Deng family fight for property. From time to time, the five mothers and sons scolded each other through radio newspapers, and the Xiang sister-in-law's side accused the children of disrespecting the mother, and even broke the scandal of family incest, and the four children did not show weakness to fight back against the misconduct of Xiang Sister-in-law's life. Many unsuspecting viewers think that the beautiful woman-like sister-in-law is the stepmother of the children who look more like their fathers.
Just when Xiang Sister-in-law lost the birth case and the mother-child relationship fell to the freezing point, the plot reversed greatly, and the five mothers and son announced at Xiang Sister-in-law's birthday party that they were reconciled as before, and life is always the best screenwriter.
Spreading branches and leaves, people thriving, is what many Chinese families yearn for. Different from Europe, the traditional Chinese primogeniture system is often the eldest son inheriting the hereditary title and clan status, and the property is divided equally by the sons, and the number of people who branch out when inheriting the inheritance becomes the key to the distribution of benefits.
In the Hurun Rich List released in 2018, Lee Shau Kee became the richest man in Hong Kong for the first time in two decades with a net worth of more than 190 billion yuan. However, Lee Shau Kee did not set the rules for the distribution of his property very early as Li Ka-shing, and Lee Shau Kee's two sons were destined to fight for their lives on the battlefield of fighting for family property, but the brothers' weapons were very primitive - to give birth to sons. Li Shaoji had never had a grandson before, and the elderly Li was revealed to have passed down the word to his two sons, whoever gave birth to a grandson had more family property.
The second son Li Jiacheng let Xu Ziqi become a "hundred billion daughter-in-law", began the industrious birth process, the first two children Xu Ziqi gave birth to two thousand gold, Li Jiacheng vaguely showed a hint of "mamba temperament", but the third child is always a grandson, Li Zhaoji was happy, took out a hundred million to the grandson, the fourth child is a grandson, it is said that Li Shaoji rewarded 1 billion.
The eldest son Li Jiajie because the father forcibly separated himself and his girlfriend, always single in one breath, it seems that the second son Li Jiacheng seized the opportunity in this game, who knows Li Jiajie quietly went to the United States to find a surrogacy agency to give birth to triplet baby boys, what a beautiful curve overtaking.
With four wives and seventeen children, Macau gambling king Stanley Ho controls more than HK$500 billion in assets. Long before the death of the gambling king, the war between the houses had already begun. At the beginning of 2011, a fight broke out in the family, and each room appeared on the scene and even went to court. One and four rooms join forces to resist the second and third rooms. Although in the end, Ho hung sun said that a consensus had been reached on the issue of family property and that the members had signed a family reconciliation agreement, but only he knew the bitterness.
In June 2018, Stanley Ho officially retired in poor health, and Macau Gaming was succeeded by the second daughter Officia Ho Chao Fung as the chairman and executive director of the company, and the chairman of Shun Tak was succeeded by the eldest daughter Ho Chao Qiong, and the two sisters actually controlled most of the family property. The three-bedroom and four-bedroom only entered SJM as a director and obtained a partial stake.
In May 2020, the gambling king passed away. Since there is no clear will left, how to distribute the 500 billion inheritance naturally becomes the focus of attention of the audience.
According to Hong Kong media sources, at the end of November last year, a lawsuit was launched between He Chaoxian of the gambling king Changfang and Xiao Meizheng, the daughter of He Chaoying (who has died), and He Chaoqiong, the second house, and the main point of contention was the specific amount of the gambling king's inheritance. He Chaoxian said that the inheritance involved a total of 11 billion yuan, and He Chaoqiong's side stated that the amount was 1.72 billion yuan. As of now, there is no clear verdict in the lawsuit.
If fertility is a weapon for the rich to fight for property, then murder is sometimes a means. The British "Daily Mail" reported in 2018 that a 22-year-old rich son in Sochi, Russia, coveted the huge amount of his parents' property, and even hoped that his parents and 10-year-old sister would die early, not only using 38,000 pounds as a reward to hire the killer online, but also asking the killer to send photos of his parents' murder after the incident, so the rich second generation provided a home design map so that the killer could avoid monitors and watchdogs. I thought that the seamless plan had succeeded, but I didn't expect that the killer he found was actually an undercover policeman pretending to be.
The cultural differences between the East and the West make it rare to buy murders to fight for heritage in China, but there is no lack of oriental characteristics in the struggle for heritage.
Cai Yulan, the second sister of Cai Wanlin, the founder of Taiwan's former richest Cathay Group, passed away on March 7, 2008, and the four children under her knees originally reached an agreement to be buried in the Jinbaoshan Cemetery in New Taipei City after the farewell ceremony of the mother, but the mother's ashes were not buried later, and a year later, she still entrusted the etiquette company to send them to Cathay Hospital for safekeeping. The two brothers believed that the sisters only cared about fighting for property and not burying their mother was "filial piety for people's children", so in May 2009, they privately decided to move the ashes to the Bali Cemetery in New Taipei City and bury them with their father Cao Yongyu, but this move caused dissatisfaction among the two sisters Cao Liming and Cao Huiming, and they also went to court, which turned into a rare case of the second generation of the giants competing for the ashes of the deceased mother.
Ten girls in their youth
Ho Wan-chi, the sister of gambling king Stanley Ho, is also a Macau gaming billionaire. Because he is the tenth oldest among his brothers and sisters, he is called "Ten Girls".
In August 2018, the Hong Kong media broke the news of the death of ten girls, but in fact, He Wanqi died in the Sanatorium and Hospital on June 5, He Wanqi had been living in the Sanatorium and Hospital before her death, it was strictly forbidden to visit, and was buried in the Zhaoyuan Cemetery in Moxingling after death, which is quite strange that the death of the old man was blocked for two months, and even the eldest daughter Mai Huizhen has been kept in the dark, and even when her mother was cremated, she was not at the scene, the reason is still the inheritance of up to 10 billion, It is said that even his former daughter-in-law was involved in the war over the birth.
Interestingly, the ten girls' last words were to ask their brother Ho Hongshen to repay the huge amount of 20 billion yuan owed to her.
It is said that there is a saying in Hong Kong's rich circles: to separate families, we must learn from Li Ka-shing.
On the afternoon of March 16, 2018, Li Ka-shing, the soon-to-be-over-90-year-old Hong Kong richest man, officially announced his retirement, resigning as chairman of Cheung Kong Hutchison Industry and Cheung Kong Industrial Group, ending his 78-year-long working career.
Although his retirement was in 2018, in 2012 Li Ka-shing made arrangements for the distribution of assets, with 40% of the Changjiang and Hehuang shares with a market capitalization of more than HK$850 billion and 22 listed companies, as well as more than HK$290 billion in listed assets, all to the eldest son Li Zeju, and the second son Li Zekai will receive financial support from Li Ka-shing for his business, and the amount of funds is "several times" that of Li Zekai's previous capital. The remaining one-third of his wealth was donated to the Li Ka-shing Foundation, run by his confidant Zhou Kaixuan.
The movie "Inception" is about business rivals using dream invasion to make rich children abandon their family businesses and pursue their dreams. Behind Li Ka-shing's seemingly textbook-like inheritance distribution, there seems to be a bit of a shadow of "Inception".
Li Ka-shing's eldest son, Lee Ze Ju, and his wife, Wang Fuxin, met in Canada in 1991, and two years later Li Ka-shing spent a fortune on their wedding. After Wang Fuxin married into the Li family, the first thing he did was to change his name to Wang Liqiao, which is said to be to boost her husband's fortunes. In the decades after marriage, Wang Liqiao rarely showed her face, only occasionally went to concerts, or went shopping, and her low-key style did not add any trouble to the Li family.
A reporter once asked Li Ka-shing, "What kind of woman can become the daughter-in-law of the Li family" Li Ka-shing laughed and said eight words: Zhishu Dali, born upwards. This is the label of Wang Liqiao.
In 1991, li Zekai, the second son who asked his father to borrow 500 million US dollars to start a business, sold 64% of the shares of Satellite TV a few years later to Murdoch, chairman of the media tycoon News Group, who wanted to explore the Chinese market, and made a profit of 1 billion US dollars. After this battle, Li Zekai was officially named "Little Superman", which also impressed his father Li Ka-shing and moved the idea of pulling him back to his own company, but Li Zekai's interest in returning to the nest was always small, and Li Ka-shing also listened to the opinions of trusted people around him, including the eldest daughter-in-law Wang Liqiao.
Wang Liqiao pushed the boat along the water, suggested that Li Ka-shing let Li Zekai start his own business, and also specially helped Li Zekai rent a floor in his company's Wanguo Baotong Building as the headquarters of Yingke Group founded by Li Zekai. In hindsight, it may be that Wang Liqiao's words only confirmed Li Shoufu's inner thoughts, but it is also possible that her words were a gram of weight to change the direction of the balance. Judging from the results, her husband Li Zeju is the most profitable, and the story does not develop towards Li Zekai's return to the Yangtze River and Huang's counterattack as a successor.
Maybe in another parallel world, the two brothers are fighting over property.
But from another point of view, no one is fighting for property, and it is not necessarily a good thing. In December 2018, Hong Kong billionaire Hui Aizhou, the son of ship king Hui Aizhou, passed away. Some economists have estimated the properties under the name of the Xu family, and The assets of Xu Shixun exceed 42 billion yuan. Xu Aizhou had two sons and a daughter, the eldest son Xu Jingan had died in 2014, and the second son, Xu Jinheng, became the only male heir.
But before his death, Xu Shixun distributed his estate, with some of his assets used for charity and the rest all invested in family trusts and insurance policies. Xu Jinheng and Li Jiaxin and his wife can only receive 2 million yuan of living expenses every month, so as to ensure that their family descendants can eat and wear without worry, and there will be no situation of three generations of rich losers. For the arrangement of this inheritance, it is enough to see Xu Shixun's foresight, but he only suffered Li Jiaxin and saved money in the name of the rich wife.
After reading this, do you feel that you have learned a lot, so where is the legacy?
Author: Xuan Wei
Edit: shp