Beneficial Owner

(With due respect, I am only sharing this case scenario for sharing and lesson to other, may all of us be very careful in future dealings)

The words beneficial owner often used in legal dispute, it means ownership on something (most case of immovable property e.g. house, land etc) even your name is not registered under the ownership document. 

Recently, I encounter one case where an owner of a premise (landlord) rents her house to a lady (tenant) some 3 years ago. All the while it was going smooth until recently the tenant start to refuse to pay her monthly rent.

The initial tenancy term (although not having any written agreement) was agreed between parties was; since the tenant requested a very low rent and giving some personal problem excuses, the landlord agrees to rent out only at the rate of her monthly instalment to her financial institution. For that the tenant was requested to pay directly to a bank account (the loan bank account). That arrangement for me is quite normal, nothing irregular.

Somehow, since last 7 months tenant start to create ‘dramas’ she start to harass the landlord and her husband, even to the extend that she is willing to be the second wife of the landlord’s husband! From there onwards she started to fail to pay any rent and keep harassing the landlord and her husband, so badly until the landlord had to change her telephone numbers and lodge a police report. (Now that is a bit too much for me to understand).

Now, to make things worse, the tenant engage a law firm to claim from the landlord’s husband damages by reason of breach of promise to marry together with other claims, totalling to RM1 million of damages!

Despite so many attempt to resolve this matter, meetings and discussion with both sides lawyers, thing has been settle till now. The rental is now 7 months overdue, the landlord had to pay the monthly instalment using her own pocket money. 

Now what is more important to do is to settle the problem one by one, namely the overdue rent first. Because that is where the problem starts. On the other hand once the landlord manage to get back her premise, I believe the tenant will be less ‘enthusiastic’ to proceed harassing the good family.

For now ignore all other rubbish claims, focus on eviction proceeding and civil claim of over due rentals. What is more important is to proceed immediately eviction proceeding at the High Court claiming vacant possession and overdue rental. The court might easily understand the nature of this problem if the landlord able to separate the issues between getting back vacant possession (eviction) and other unreasonable claim by the tenant.

As for other issue alleged by the tenant, let her bring her case to court. After all, that is the rule of law; ‘let one who put allegation bring his facts to support his case’.

I have posted before about illegal practise of landlord in Malaysia, you may read it here (http://legal-malaysia.blogspot.com/2009/11/illegal-customary-practice-of-landlord.html).