BENCH WATCH
Judge scoffs at children who
block land sale by parents
By Agencies
Justice Munyao Sila of the Environment and Land Court has ruled that parents are at liberty to deal with their free land without consulting or seeking consent of their children.
Mr.Justice Munyao- Courtesy of The Standard Newspaper
Sitting in Kisii where two children had faulted their father for selling a piece of land to some two buyers, arguing that their father held the land in trust for the family and could not sell it.
But the judge saw it differently and arrived at a conclusion that will send shock waves to children who block their parents from selling their land.
The Judge arrived at the conclusion that the property was not ancestral land held in trust for the family and therefore the father was free to deal with it whichever way he wished.
In a stinging judgment delivered on March 22, 2023 and which is likely to set precedent in many land disputes pitting parents and their children, Justice Munyao Sila stated that it is time that children stopped having a notion, that what belongs to their parents also belongs to them.
To quote His Lordship:
“…it is despicable, if not outrageous, for a child to assert that his father or mother, must subdivide his land in a particular way, and proceed to sue his parent because he/she does not wish to deal with the land in the way proposed by the child…
It is time that children stopped having a notion, that what belongs to their parents also belongs to them in equal measure, and that their parents must subdivide and distribute land to them in a particular manner."
The Judge went on to state that the land in dispute belonged to the father and he could do whatever he wanted with it. That his children had not right to compel him to subdivide the land in a certain way.
“It was his land and he could do whatever he wanted with it… the 2nd and 3rd Defendants (his children) had no right to compel the 1st defendant (their father) to subdivide his land in a certain way. Neither can they purport to attempt to reverse a sale that was freely entered into by their late father. The property was never held in their trust.”
The Judge fell short of telling the children to go to hell when he castigated them and described their action as “shameful” and “abominable.”
“I regret to tell the defendants that they have to live with the fact that their father decided to sell the land. He was the owner of the land and nothing barred him from selling the land…
The conduct of the 2nd and 3rd defendant was, and remains, shameful. It is abominable. They relentlessly hounded their father; they demanded that he distributes the land in the form that they themselves wanted; even when their father gave them some land, they complained that it was too little; they sued their father before the Chief, the clan, and before the tribunal; they failed to give their father peace. This is despite the fact that it was their father who took them to school and educated them up to University level and made them to be what they are today. They are thankless…They have to live with the fact that they led their father to sell the land so that he can have peace. They cannot be heard to complain.”
