A man has suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged an at­tempt by his de­ceased fa­ther’s busi­ness part­ner to claim that they were in a co­hab­i­ta­tion re­la­tion­ship be­fore his death in 2016. 

De­liv­er­ing an oral judge­ment, last week, Fam­i­ly Court Judge Allyson Ramk­er­rysingh dis­missed Jas­so­dra Sook­lal’s ap­pli­ca­tion to cer­ti­fy her al­leged co­hab­i­ta­tion re­la­tion­ship with Kash­war Ma­haraj. 

Ac­cord­ing to court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Sook­lal, who ran a hor­ti­cul­tur­al busi­ness with Ma­haraj ap­plied for the sta­tus af­ter he passed away in De­cem­ber 2016. 

The ap­pli­ca­tion was strong­ly op­posed by Ma­haraj’s son Girish, who re­sides in Cana­da and chal­lenged it be­cause if suc­cess­ful Sook­lal would have got­ten con­trol of his fa­ther’s es­tate and cor­re­spond­ing re­main­ing as­sets in­clud­ing bank ac­counts. 

In his ap­pli­ca­tion, Girish claimed that be­tween 1996 and 2000, his fa­ther lived in Texas with his moth­er and three sib­lings. He claimed that af­ter his fam­i­ly mi­grat­ed to Cana­da, his fa­ther re­turned to Trinidad as he had dif­fi­cul­ties find­ing em­ploy­ment. He al­leged that when he vis­it­ed Trinidad in 2002, his fa­ther in­tro­duced Sook­lal as his busi­ness part­ner. In 2008, Girish came to live briefly with his fa­ther, who was stay­ing at Sook­lal’s home. 

“Dur­ing the in­ter­est­ed par­ty’s time liv­ing with the de­ceased and the ap­pli­cant, the re­spon­dent is aware that they slept in sep­a­rate bed­rooms, in fact, the de­ceased slept on the couch while his son slept in his room,” Girish’s lawyers claimed.

His lawyers claimed that af­ter hav­ing a con­fronta­tion with Sook­lal he was forced to leave the house and re­turn to Cana­da in May 2009. 

In her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Ramk­er­rysingh not­ed that Sook­lal had failed to pro­vide suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to prove that she had a re­la­tion­ship with Ma­haraj be­sides their busi­ness arrange­ment. 

While she not­ed that Girish’s ev­i­dence over the ab­sence of the al­leged re­la­tion­ship was al­so in­suf­fi­cient, Jus­tice Ramk­er­rysingh not­ed that Sook­lal had the bur­den of proof un­der the Co­hab­i­ta­tion­al Re­la­tion­ships Act. 

Jus­tice Ramk­er­rysingh al­so sug­gest­ed that if Sook­lal had in­clud­ed Ma­haraj on the deed for her prop­er­ty dur­ing their 14 years liv­ing to­geth­er, such ev­i­dence would have as­sist­ed her claim over the al­leged re­la­tion­ship. 

Girish was rep­re­sent­ed by Farai Hove Ma­sai­sai and Jen­nifer Farah-Tull of Hove and As­so­ciates, while Sook­lal was rep­re­sent­ed by Richard Sir­joo.