Cape woman fights for inheritance after Swiss ‘life partner’ died without naming her in will

A South African woman has spent the last two years fighting for an inheritance she believes she is entitled to after her partner, a wealthy Swiss businessman, died in 2020 without including her in his will.

Hans Dieter Fuchs, 69, died in a Swiss hospital in 2020 after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Pearl Walsh, 50, claims she was Fuchs' life partner at the time, but the beneficiaries of his last will and his trustees are denying her the inheritance she says she was promised by her late "life partner". 

"We met eight years prior to us starting our relationship officially in 2016. We had a brief split when we both dated other people, but we got back together," Walsh told TimesLIVE Premium.

She claims Fuchs proposed to her after her birthday party on November 29 2019 "after he asked his Swiss tax lawyer to register me as his life partner on the Swiss tax system in Switzerland".

This claim is one of several that are strongly disputed by lawyer Rael Gootkin from Werksmans Attorneys, who is representing the 20 respondents in Walsh's application.

"The 20 respondents consist of the executors of the estate, the beneficiaries of the deceased and the Swiss lawyers who represent them, as well as myself and the trustees of the Saturn Trust and the Saturn Property Trust that were created for Fuchs," Gootkin said.

"In November 2021 Walsh applied to the [Western] Cape High Court for an order preventing the trustees from performing any further administrative duties until the finalisation of the matter, while at the same time forcing the trust to pay her R1m a year tax-free as maintenance."

According to Walsh, her late lover promised her the sun, moon and stars.

"My love promised me that I would be looked after after his death. He even said one night that I shouldn't worry, after his death I would be part of the 1%," Walsh said.

She says they "even" bought a ring, and she provided TimesLIVE Premium with a receipt of almost R200,000.

"Our engagement was a very private affair in our room after the party," Walsh said.

Early in 2020, bad news waited. "At the end of January we discovered Hans Dieter had prostate cancer and he decided to have the operation in Switzerland."

According to Gootkin, before leaving for Switzerland Fuchs came to his office "in the presence of witnesses" and ordered that payments to Walsh be immediately ceased.

Walsh claims this is a fabrication, however. "Why would he walk into his lawyer's office to terminate a relationship that he has with me, a loving relationship of building a future and plenty of promises to me and my children?" she said.

Walsh said Fuchs had paid her R1m in the year leading up to his death, with more to follow annually. "Our relationship continued lovingly. We were engaged and I was registered on the Swiss tax system. My only concern was his wellbeing and that we get the operation done for him to recover."

Gootkin denied that Walsh was paid R1m or that she was ever registered in Switzerland as Fuchs' life partner. "She received four monthly payments of R60,000 each from December 2019 to March 2020. She is not registered as his life partner in Switzerland and there is no co-habitation agreement registered in South Africa," he said.

Once in Switzerland, Fuchs remained in contact, Walsh said. "We spoke four to five times a day. Our last call was on March 17 2020. After that he was in a coma until he died," she said.

TimesLIVE Premium has seen screengrabs of messages between them and of conversations and Facetime calls.

"He always told me how much he loves me. I was his queen and his princess. He deeply loved me," said Walsh.

A month after Fuchs' death, she received an e-mail from Gootkin informing her that he acted for the trustees.

"He stated that the trustees have decided that they were no longer obligated to pay my monthly stipend and that I had no rights or access to anything of my life partner."

Walsh decided to pray for relief from the high court, but failed twice.

The first attempt failed when acting judge Raadiya Wathen-Falken dismissed her application with costs in November 2021. This was because Walsh used a wrong legal procedure when instituting legal proceedings.

Her second application was struck from the high court roll in January 2023, only to be re-enrolled on August 8 by acting judge president Patricia Goliath.

"Walsh requested a postponement, and it was duly postponed to February 2024. The application was argued on February 6," Gootkin said.

In it that judgment, which TimesLIVE Premium has seen, the court struck out a number of paragraphs in her founding affidavit on the basis that "they are scandalous, vexatious and/or irrelevant". She was ordered to pay the costs of the striking-out application, including the costs of two counsel.

Gootkin has further bad news for Walsh. "My client's estate is insolvent. The asset value of his estate at his death was R26.6m, but he had liabilities totalling R74.8m — R72.1m being the loan owed to the Saturn Trust and R2.7m which the estate owes to Sars," he said.

Gootkin said Fuchs specified in his last will that Swiss law would apply to his estate.

"He was a Swiss citizen; Ms Walsh contends that he renounced his Swiss citizenship to take up South African citizenship, but this is not so. My client had a South African identity document, but it stated that he was not a citizen," Gootkin said.

Walsh disputes the validity of Fuchs’s last will.

"Ms Walsh contends that he had revoked his last will, but she cannot produce a later will and the executors, who were my client’s trusted tax and legal advisers, were neither told of nor given one," Gootkin said.

TimesLIVE Premium spoke to two legal experts about the matter, and neither had good news for Walsh.

University of Pretoria legal expert Llewellyn Curlewis said Walsh has a difficult path ahead of her.

When you love someone, do you question everything or do you trust them?

—  Pearl Walsh

"If the estate is being handled in Switzerland, her only chance would be to convince the South African courts that she was the life partner of the deceased. Should she be successful, she would have to go to the Swiss courts and ask that the South African court decision be mirrored there.

"But to prove her position as life partner, she needs documentary proof like a co-habitation agreement registered in South Africa. If she does not have that, I suspect her claim to be dead in the water," Curlewis said on Wednesday.

Cape lawyer Bertus Preller, who specialises in divorce matters, also said Walsh's chances of success were slim.

"Even if she is successful in the South African courts, she will still struggle in Switzerland where they do not recognise these types of life partnerships," he said.

Preller also said a co-habitation agreement would be key to Walsh's success.

Walsh says she does not have one, however.

"I did not know we had to. I did not understand that we should have drafted a whole contract with a lawyer. When you love someone, do you question everything or do you trust them?"

Apology: 

Pictures used in this story were changed after we inadvertently used an image of Leander van Nelson with Hans Dieter Fuchs instead of Pearl Walsh with Fuchs. All the images were supplied by Pearl Walsh, who is Van Nelson’s sister. TimesLIVE unreservedly apologises to Van Nelson.