Mother and daughter turned against each other, sisters tore apart, and there was no one left in a wealthy family that had been fighting for property lawsuits for 14 years 

Text | Mi Li's mother

Mi Lima, a professional melon-eating contestant, has written many stories of wealthy families. Some are very torn bloody, and some are quiet and harmonious.

It is not uncommon to tear up, because after all, there are many rights and wrongs in wealthy families, and their interests are all real money, and since ancient times, brothers have been on the wall, wealthy families have three wives and four concubines, and their children naturally have their own selfish intentions.

However, like the gambling king Stanley Ho's family and Liu Luanxiong's side, they all belong to the struggle of various forces, and it is indeed relatively rare for a mother and compatriots to meet each other.

Chen Tinghua's family falls into this category.

Hong Kong cotton yarn tycoon Chen Tinghua founded Nan Fung Group, and he is also an old man on the Forbes list. His family relationship is extremely simple and clear, just a daughter-in-law and two daughters, but he beat him fiercer than anyone else.

It can be said that Lao Chen is really uneasy in his life, and when he is old, he divorced in a state of semi-dementia because of a dispute over property.

The two daughters' lawsuits over property are so tired that the people are tired of watching them, and they are still either in court or on the way to prepare for the trial.

It seems that the management of wealthy family relationships is also very knowledgeable.

It's not enough for you to make money, and the family is restless, even if you stay on the Forbes list for half your life, it will still be difficult at night.

Recently, the lawsuit of Chen Tinghua, the founder of Nan Fung Group, over a 100 billion inheritance has been heard again. The second daughter, Chen Huihui, pointed out that her mother was bewitched by her eldest sister Chen Huifang when she wrote the will, which was invalid.

In this way, both parties will have to present evidence, and the court can only hold a scheduled hearing, and the next time is expected to be September 2025.

The Chen family's lawsuit is simply a battle between two sisters over their parents' property. The lawsuit, which began in 2010 and lasted for 14 years, has made judges publicly bored and the media have lost interest in reporting.

It can be said that it is very speechless, this is not a complicated wealthy family structure, and it can also cause such a protracted bloody dispute.

Fight to the end of the day

In Hong Kong, China, Chen Tinghua has the titles of "Cotton Yarn King", "Real Estate King" and "Warrant King". He single-handedly founded Nan Fung Group, which spans several major sectors such as textiles, property development, investment, construction and shipping.

Nan Fung Group's property in Hong Kong is HK$66 billion, and with the real estate business in the United States and other regions, the overall valuation exceeds HK$100 billion. The company was delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1989, so the 100 billion assets were all Chen Tinghua's.

There are different opinions about Chen Tinghua's family history, the most legendary and evil is that he is the son of a butcher, and at the age of 20 he worked with Zhou Zongliang, the "paint king", in Shanghai, and was very appreciated. In 1949, Zhou Zongliang came to Hong Kong with a lot of money, but the money was cheated out by the "local snake", and Zhou Zongliang could not accept the reality and committed suicide.

Five years later, Chen Tinghua suddenly set up his own door and founded Nan Fung Textile, where the money came from, no one knows.

Chen Tinghua and his wife Yang Fuhe (also known as Yang Fu'e) have two daughters, the eldest daughter Chen Huifang and the second daughter Chen Huihui.

The eldest daughter Chen Huifang has lived in the United States for a long time, and when she married a Filipino, her father was very opposed, so relatively speaking, he prefers the enterprising and spicy second daughter Chen Huihui.

But the mother prefers the eldest daughter, and the relationship with the second daughter is relatively poor.

Dinh H. Chan had earlier made a will to put 95% of his assets into the Ting H. Chan Charitable Fund, leaving only the remaining 5% to future generations. Specifically, Chen Tenghwa divided the HK$3.1 billion worth of Hong Kong property equally among his two daughters, and also gifted several properties and a farm in the United States to his eldest daughter.

Therefore, in 1985, Chen Tinghua passed on the Nan Fung Group to his second daughter, who was in charge of the business in the United States, and the family had no objection to this.

But things are not so simple, a perfect division of property is also an untouchable vision for Lao Chen.

In 1995, Chen Tinghua was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and advanced prostate cancer. He told his eldest daughter, Chen Huifang, that he had signed some property documents, but he couldn't remember clearly. So this became the fuse that provoked the family legacy war.

Let's just say, "I can't remember" is the most deadly. This setting of "seems to have but seems to be not" can easily intensify the contradiction and arouse suspicion.

The mother and the eldest daughter both called the second daughter to spy on this document, but Yang Huihui refused to reveal half a word, and the more this happened, the more it seemed that there was something wrong here, so the protracted war began.

With the advent of the U.S. financial crisis, Chen Huifang, who was far away in the United States, felt that the value of the U.S. property she had been assigned was depreciating, and she instantly felt that she had suffered a loss. So he decided to return to Hong Kong for development.

But the Hong Kong industry belongs to her sister Chen Huihui, and she must not agree.

Chen Huihui has a very pungent personality and is very decisive in doing things. At that time, she was already officially the chairman and managing director of the group, and she was in a position of power, not only preventing her sister from entering the group, but also kicking her out of the family foundation.

Chen Huifang saw that she was no match for her sister when she returned to Hong Kong, so she decided to unite with her mother.

The so-called general trend of the world will be divided for a long time, just like Shu and Wu jointly fighting Cao Wei, the eldest sister understands strategic cooperation. It doesn't matter if this cooperation is made, the mother directly sacrificed her wife.

At the age of 83, she filed a divorce lawsuit with her 88-year-old wife, Chen Tinghua. Mi Li's mother called her a good guy, divorce at this age is indeed rare in the wealthy circle.

After the divorce, some of the terms of Dinh Chen's estate will become invalid, so that it can be convenient for the mother and daughter to join forces to fight for property.

Sure enough, in the following year, Yang Fuhe sued his second daughter, Chen Huihui, alleging that when she divided the family property from 2003 to 2005, she "made false statements and exerted improper influence" on Chen Tinghua, causing herself to suffer losses in the distribution of property, and demanded that the second daughter make compensation and account accounts.

The divorce lawsuit lasted for two years, and in 2011, Chen Tinghua and Yang Fuhe divorced, ending their half-century marriage. Yang Fuhe was allocated HK$10 billion and 3 property units.

Chen Tinghua, who had terminal cancer and Alzheimer's disease, passed away at the age of 89 as a divorced old man, but the battle between the mother and daughter was far from over.

Three hundred rounds of battle

In the first round of the campaign jointly launched by his mother Yang Fuhe and eldest daughter Chen Huifang, the court ordered Chen Huihui to pay 8.7 billion Hong Kong dollars in compensation to her mother Yang Fuhe.

Chen Huihui resolutely refused to agree, she refused to accept it, and insisted on appealing.

There was a stalemate in procrastination, and years passed. His mother, Yang Fuhe, died at the age of 92, and all his assets were given to his eldest daughter Chen Huifang in his will. Under Hong Kong law, the heirs of the estate may continue to sue in accordance with their wishes.

As a result, the eldest daughter's strategic alliance was dissolved, but she occupied all the assets left by her mother and continued to fight the lawsuit with her sister. The battle for property has completely turned into a duel between two sisters.

At the trial this year, Chen Huihui talked about the fact that her mother gave all her property to her sister, and she proposed that her mother's will was improperly influenced by her eldest sister, and she should have a copy of it.

As a result, the lawsuit, which has lasted for more than ten years, has once again fallen into a stalemate.

And later, Chen Huihui simply resigned from the two positions of chairman and general manager of Nan Fung Group, and invited Liang Jinsong, the "God of Wealth of Hong Kong", to be the chairman, and hung up the title of honorary chairman to concentrate on fighting lawsuits.

I can say that I put my heart and soul into it.

In fact, the second daughter Chen Huihui's business acumen is more with her father, and her decisive and ruthless way of doing things is very suitable for controlling the country that Lao Chen has beaten down.

In 2006, Chen Huihui led the company to compete with Poly Real Estate for the king of "Pipa Island" in Guangzhou, and the two sides bid for a total of 145 rounds, and finally Chen Huihui won with 742 million yuan, which is now the Nanfeng International Convention and Exhibition Center.

In early 2007, Nan Fung China and HSBC established a real estate private equity fund, which began to be used for investment in mainland China, with each commercial real estate investment between US$70 million and US$100 million.

Later, Chen Huihui won the Xilai Plaza project, the No. 1 Financial Street project, the Zhongguancun project, and the Dalian Gangzhou Industrial International Logistics Center project in Dalian, with a total real estate investment of more than US$1 billion in mainland China.

Chen Tinghua still has a certain reason for taking a fancy to his second daughter's fiery style of doing things. Now Nan Fung Group is in its third generation.

Chan has three children with her ex-husband Cheung Chi Tong (grandson of Hong Kong tycoon Cheung Chu-shan).

The eldest son, Zhang Shicheng, started from operation and is now gradually taking over the group. The eldest daughter, Cheung Thiam Lok, serves as the trustee and chief strategy officer of the D. H. Chan Foundation. Seeing that the spinning mill left behind by her grandfather had been abandoned, her youngest daughter, Tim Lam, came up with the idea of turning the old factory into a retail mall and innovation centre, and the "Nan Fung Workshop" officially opened in 2018.

Although she retreated behind the scenes and concentrated on fighting a lawsuit with her sister, in October 2023, Chen Huihui still ranked 861st in the "2023 Hurun Report" with a wealth of 7.3 billion yuan.

In fact, it can be seen from Chen Huihui's 145 rounds of bidding with Poly Group that she is a ruthless character who is extremely patient and does not give up until she achieves her goal.

So none of the sisters let go of this lawsuit, and they fought like this for more than ten years, and it is still deadlocked.

Home and everything is prosperous

Chen Tinghua's life can definitely be regarded as magnificent, he started from scratch, and as a founding generation, he has built a business empire with hundreds of billions of assets. But he didn't have a good family style, so he was on the Forbes list for half his life, but he still ended up in a bleak evening and a lonely widow.

The lawsuit has been going on for more than ten years, and even the judge has to shake his head and say:

"This intra-family dispute went to court, wasting the time and money of both parties. ”

Lee Kum Kee also has a strict "family constitution" that clearly stipulates that no member of the family is allowed to divorce, otherwise he will be directly removed from the family ranks.

I have to say that this is really much wiser than Chen Tinghua.

Lee Kum Kee believes that no one knows that it started as an oyster sauce and began to make seasonings during the Guangxu period, becoming a century-old brand in Hong Kong that radiates to the mainland.

Today, when the grievances of wealthy families have long been commonplace, the Lee Kum Kee family has been able to break the law of "no more than three generations of wealth" and have been rich for 135 years.

Lee Kum Kee's "Family Constitution" requires every family member to strictly enforce it as if they were abiding by the company's rules, otherwise they will be kicked out.

If Chen Tinghua could have understood this truth earlier, he would definitely not have caused himself to divorce in his 80s, and until he passed away for many years, his descendants were still fighting over property.

Even if there are hundreds of billions of assets, the children of the family are like this, after all, it is disgraceful and not good-looking.

Zhao Anji, the female ship king who died in an accident not long ago, is known as the light of the Chinese as the heir of the family industry.

Her father, Zhao Xicheng, was a well-known figure in China's shipbuilding industry at that time, and the six daughters he educated all graduated from the Ivy League, and four of them were Harvard top students.

The 6 daughters do not have any disputes about the family property, because each of them shines in their respective fields, and they are still too busy to realize their self-worth, their father's achievements are his, and their own achievements belong to them.

Even Zhao Anji, as the youngest daughter, inherited the family industry because she felt that her sisters would not take over, and she had the responsibility to take over the country laid by her parents, because the hard work of the previous generation needed to be inherited.

Succession is based on a sense of responsibility, not on personal gain.

If one or two children are trained to be excellent, it may be an accident, but the six daughters are all so good, and there is really no bloody incident, then people have to reflect on the importance of family education.

Looking at the Lee Kum Kee family, because of the strict family rules, the prosperity of their traditional business has really continued for more than 100 years.

Presumably, if Chen Tinghua had a spirit in heaven, he would also regret that he did not have the wisdom to manage the family and did not take the importance of family education to heart.

The real wealthy family is not a successful entrepreneur, with assets of hundreds of billions, because money is an external object, when brothers are against the wall, husband and wife turn against each other, those wealth and resources that have been created will make you feel ironic.

Only good education and inheritance are imperishable wealth, because it is endless and inexhaustible.

There are many wealthy families, with different family structures and forms, and stories of dog blood are endless. But those wealthy families who have raised excellent children and are busy contributing to society in various fields can always get more respect and admiration.

Personal Profile: @米粒妈爱分享 Mi Li's mother, American returnee, Haidian parent. Focus on learning, educational experience and further education.