The late Mbiyu Koinage son David NjunoThe renowned extended Koinange family ushered 2018 with their complicated property disputes unresolved.
The Court of Appeal has once again directed the families of former powerful Cabinet minister, the late Mbiyu Koinange and his younger brother, former Provincial Commissioner Charles Karuga Koinange, to iron out their differences in the High Court.
The estates of both fallen polygamists are being administered by widows, siblings and children who are yet to agree on how to distribute the massive inheritance comprising lucrative shares in blue-chip companies and valuable land holdings in Nairobi, Kiambu, Nakuru, Mombasa and Embu counties.
In the latest twist to the long drawn legal showdown, the three-member Appellate bench ruled that Karuga, who died on February 20, 2004, did not make a valid written will date June 16, 1999, and his estate can only be administered in accordance with the law.
The late Karuga suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and lacked the mental capacity to make an elaborate nine-page will, Justices Philip Waki, Asike-Makhandia and William Ouko ruled last Friday and concurred with findings made on January 22, 2015, by High Court Judge Luka Kimaru.
However, the court directed that the shares held by the deceased in the expansive family land in Kiambaa, and in any other limited liability companies, if not agreed upon by family members, would be determined on available evidence during the administration of the estate.
“Isabella Wanjiku Karanja, William Kihara Karuga, Samuel Karuga Koinange and Peter Mbiyu Koinange are lawfully appointed as administrators of the estate of the deceased and shall be issued with a full grant of letters of administration,” the court ordered in a 35-page judgment.
Karuga’s first wife, the late Grace, bore him six sons former Permanent Secretary Dr. Wilfred Karuga Koinange, John Miring’u, Paul Mbiyu, Leonard Kang’ethe, William Kihara and Ernest Ngugi-and four daughters Mary Wanjira, Marion Wambui, Isabella Wanjiku and Rosemary Gachiku.