Woodstock:

Thanks for your latest posting in the NEWS section. (03/03/2007)

You are right. You ought to be proud of being one of the few, or perhaps even the ONLY website, which has all the news directly or indirectly related to Anita.

What amazes me is the reaction of the family. Taken from your posting: "......it seems that they didn't understand the decision of the Justice Department, because they still talked about the hearing in the High Court."

One cannot help but start to wonder if there is serious communication problem between Mui family and their lawyer.

May be the Justice Department announcement was done in English and the lawyer did a poor translation to them in Chinese? Is this a communication problem, a translation issue, or a plain deliberate act of passing on faulty information to his clients? Does this lawyer have any professional conduct? Just kind of scary....... Sigh... Sigh.... Sigh once again.

I just hope this brings everything to an end. Anita loved her family and her friends so much, she would hate to see them fighting against each other.

Actually I should thank Beepbeep and many other readers who would send me news clippings when I miss out any

FY: Totally agree with you that it is a relief that the "stealing" case got dismissed on March 3rd. However, that was only the end of one battle, the war is still going on.

Just to quickly summarize, there have been 3 lawsuits as far as I can remember:
(1) Mui's brother $3 billion lawsuit against the hospital and several other people.
(2) Mui's mother suing HSBC bank lady, Eddie Lau, and Mui's assistant for stealing from the safe that Mui kept at home.
(3) Mui's mother challenging the validity of the document that Mui signed (when she was sick in hospital) for designating HSBC to manage her Estate Trust Fund and to be the Executor of her Will.

Both case (1) and (2) have already be thrown out of court. Thank goodness.

According to Woodstock's latest NEWS posting (dated March 8th/2007), case (3) will be coming up soon. Let's hope that this one would wind up quickly, and that the end of case(3) would truly mean the end of all disputes. I am sure Anita had good reasons behind all her decision-making, especially regarding these important matters. So I hope whoever or whatever organization she originally assigned to be the Exceutor would remain as the Executor of her Will.

FY: Since you are probably the legal expert among the readers here, hope you don't mind if I ask you this question. HSBC obviously needs to hire lawyers to handle these lawsuits. Would they take money out of Mui's Estate Trust Fund to pay for these legal bills?

Hey BeepBeep,

Wow - thank you for listing the separate lawsuits so clearly. I had lost track after a while, because, let's face it, it's difficult having to pay attention to Anita's lousy brother!

And thanks for giving me kudos, but I'm not quite a legal expert (I'm studying law, but this is only my first year, we haven't gotten to trusts and estates yet, and US law is very different from Hong Kong's) - but I do remember some news article referring to the fact that money will be taken out of Anita's lump sum to pay for these administrative expenses, including the legal fees.

What I'm wondering about is whether there is a sub-division within the lump-sum, and whether there is an absolute cap / ceiling for such uses, in order to prevent the entire estate being wiped out by legal expenses. Only someone who is familiar with these types of financial arrangements will be able to tell us, I'm afraid.

How sad it is! They don't realize that they are not benefitting anyone when they file these unwarranted lawsuits - they are simply draining away Anita's hard-earned money.

FY: Thank you for your reply.

I agree with your comments: "How sad it is! They don't realize that they are not benefitting anyone when they file these unwarranted lawsuits - they are simply draining away Anita's hard-earned money." These are my thoughts exactly, and probably shared by many other fans.

Your idea makes a lot of sense re: having an upper limit to the amount of money that could be spent on legal fees. Let's hope that's the way Mui's Estate Trust Fund was set up. Otherwise, it would be so sad to see her hard-earned money being drained away like that.

Totally agree with Woodstock's comments in the latest news update (dated April 11) with regards to lawsuit # 4. The whole thing is, once again, just a total waste of Anita's hard-earned money, not to mention the absolute disrespect of her wishes if one tries to over-turn her will. Furthermore, if any of her assets is meant for charity donations, then some needy people may not be getting the financial help that they ought to get from the Trust Fund, if it runs dry due to the huge expenditures towards extra maintenance and legal fees.

As far as I can recall (and please correct me if I am wrong), it is only because HSBC is being sued in lawsuit (# 3) (see my March 8th posting above) that the Court had to appoint this accounting firm to take over temporarily in managing the Estate Trust Fund. Now this accounting firm is being sued as well !!

Looking back at Woodstock's translation of the August 4th, 2006 news reporting from MingPao, even the Judge was wondering about the high proportion of the Trust Fund's expenditure being spent on the trustee fee (maintenance fee), and it is stated that " .......the final fee will eventually be evaluated by the court....(惟有關費用最終仍須由法庭評定)" One can only hope that the Court would actually set a reasonable cap to the management fee that can be charged by the accounting firm. This may be the only positive thing the Court can do for the family.

BeepBeep: I'm replying your posting under the other thread. Actually, even without my translation, you would know what's the outcome of the law suits.

What I feel is that we should not take things for granted. It's not mandatory to leave one's estate to the blood related. Mui was a responsible person and always felt indebted and grateful to persons who helped her in her career. So if that MKM has given her a hand or hasn't hurt her that much by cheating her money, I bet Mui might leave him something. As a matter of fact, she gives her mother such a large sum of monthly allowance, that should be enough to support that MKM and his family too.

In short, I feel we should treasure whatever we have such as persons around us as the message Mui conveyed to us. Also we should be contented and feel grateful for whatever we have, not let greed in control of our conscience.

Speaking of the latest news - where's the English translation? I'm dying to know if they'll be any DVD concert releases of her past shows.

No, nothing yet!

Man....love the new link to another Anita site!