TRUTH TO POWER WITH EMOTIONAL COLOUR
St Johns, Antigua, August 26, 2020 – St Peters MP Asot Michael wants a political activist questioning his record of performance to explain a 2000 court decision that rejected a will she prepared for her father seeking to deprive his wife of assets worth over a million dollars while claiming the lion share of his estate for herself and three children.
On the August 23rd 2020 edition of the Pointe FM programme Browne and Browne in a heated exchange with UPP turncoat Donna Chaia who combatively asked what he has done for the constituency as MP, Michael raised the issue of the “falsification” of the will of her father Anthony Joseph Chaia.
Eyebrows were raised over the tone of Michael’s response and there were suggestions that an apology was in order. But the veteran ABLP politician says there will be no apology for speaking “truth to power with a little emotional colour”.
Anthony Chaia died of heart failure in the US on December 16, 1991 after a period of hospitalization in Brooklyn from October 24th, 1991. On October 26th, 1991, two days later, he executed a will in Donna Chaia’s handwriting which she claims he dictated to her.
But when that will was presented for probate in December 1991 the three executors of the previous will of August 17, 1991, the third of four, asked the court to declare the fourth will invalid and pronounce the third will as “the true last will” of Anthony Chaia.
The September 200 judgement of the Court observed that Donna Chaia herself “wrote the will with no one else according to her being around and in which she is appointed sole executrix and inherits either in her own right or through her three children, the lion share of the deceased’s estate to the almost total exclusion of the testator’s aging widow Rose whom he held in high esteem and whose welfare and future well-being were one of his primary and paramount concerns”.
The court noted that within the first 72 hours of his admission to the Cardiac Care Unit at Veteran’s Hospital, Mr Chaia was in very poor shape.
“Throughout much of that period he had been complaining of and was being treated for chest pains, he had been restless and agitated and had little or no sleep and was under sedation. At the end of the day there is the lurking suspicion that Anthony Joseph Chaia may not have been the author or the sole author of the will of 26th October, 1991 and clearly would not in all the circumstances have understood, appreciated or approved of its contents
Justice Ephraim Georges ruled that these facts “give rise to suspicions which in my view… lead to the belief that the will dated 26th October 1991 does not truly reflect the last will of Anthony Joseph Chaia and that he could not in the circumstances fully understand, appreciate and approve of its contents and implications.
“For these reasons I hold that the impugned will should not be admitted to probate and pronounce in favor of the earlier will and order that probate of the will of 17th August 1991 should be decreed in solemn form…”