Former Senator Bill O’Chee has lodged documents in the supreme court alleging elder abuse by his father’s partner

Former Senator Bill O’Chee has lodged documents in the supreme court alleging his father was abused by his partner and conned into cutting family out of his will.

A former National Party senator has launched an extraordinary legal challenge to his late father’s will, claiming his dad once told him his partner was trying to kill him and he feared for his life.

Bill O’Chee claims in a Supreme Court document that his father William O’Chee’s de facto, Ng Hong Kei, isolated and controlled him and manipulated him into transferring two Brisbane properties to her.

He wants a judge to set aside a “purported” 2018 will, make adequate provision for him from his father’s estate and find that there was “undue influence’’ involved in the property transfers.

Mr O’Chee, the youngest person appointed to the Senate at age 24 and who left federal politics at 33 with a life pension of $45,000 a year, says he does not own a home.

He lives in a Northgate house owned by his parents-in-law through a trust, of which he is not a beneficiary.

Bill O'Chee, pictured in 2007.

Ms Ng, 63, has told The Sunday Mail all the serious allegations against her by Mr O’Chee, the eldest of William O’Chee’s three children with his former wife, are untrue.

William O’Chee, who had dementia, died last year aged 92 as a result of heart failure and heart disease, according to his death certificate.

Bill O’Chee, 55, claims Ms Ng did not tell him about his father’s death until two weeks later and he and his children were devastated.

“I was stunned, as I had not been told he was ill, nor that he had been admitted to hospital,” he said in his affidavit.

He said William O’Chee and Ms Ng, a Chinese national 30 years younger than him, began their de facto relationship around 1995-96.

He claims in 2016, shortly after his father’s two residential properties were transferred to Ms Ng, his father was hospitalised with “peculiar” injuries, including broken ribs, bruises and a contusion on the back of his head.

“For some time prior to this in 2016, my father had been telling my wife, Hermione Duveck-Smith and me that Ng Hong Kei was trying to kill him and that he was afraid for his life,” Mr O’Chee said in his affidavit.

Ng Hong Kei was the de facto partner of William O'Chee, whose will the now the subject of a court battle. Pic: Annette Dew

Ms Ng, who is yet to file a court response, has denied it to The Sunday Mail, asking why Bill O’Chee did not immediately call police at the time if he believed it.

Mr O’Chee claims that, after his father was hospitalised in 2016, he made a statement to Fortitude Valley police that led to an officer interviewing his father.

“The police told me after this that they held concerns for his safety but had insufficient evidence to bring a prosecution,” Mr O’Chee said in the court document.

Ms Ng, who now works in the aged care industry, told The Sunday Mail William O’Chee’s injuries were sustained in a fall at home and she had given him CPR and called an ambulance.

Mr O’Chee said he told police in 2017 he suspected his father was a victim of elder abuse “at the hands of Ng Hong Kei”, after his father was taken to hospital, suffering from a chest infection.

He said a doctor said William O’Chee told the hospital Ms Ng said he was too much trouble to look after and she had left him in bed for a week.

“He was clearly malnourished and in a very poor mental state,” Mr O’Chee said in the affidavit.

He said when his father was admitted to hospital in 2018, a nurse told him his father needed more care at home.

 

On police advice he organised for aged care home services, but he later found out the provider he chose had been blocked and replaced by a Chinese organisation and friend of Ms Ng.

Mr O’Chee said it showed “the lengths to which Ng Hong Kei was willing to go to isolate my father from his family … These actions left him totally in the thrall of Ng Hong Kei”.

“After this it became almost impossible to talk to my father as the phone would never be answered, or Ng Hong Kei would say that he was not available,” Mr O’Chee said.

He said after his father’s death, Ms Ng gave him a photo of a two-page document purporting to be his father’s will signed in 2018.

Ng Hong Kei was the de facto partner of William O'Chee. Pic: Annette Dew

Mr O’Chee claims in his statement his father, who had dementia since 2015 and Parkinson’s disease, did not have the legal capacity to make a valid will and he was incapable of signing anything.

Oxford University-educated Mr O’Chee, sole director of Himalaya Consulting in Brisbane, says the purported will made inadequate provision for him or his two siblings.

Ms Ng has denied Mr O’Chee’s claims that she isolated, controlled, manipulated and inadequately cared for his father, telling The Sunday Mail it was “all rubbish” and “all not true”.

She said she delayed contacting Bill O’Chee after his father died because she was too upset and shocked by the sudden death. She said she called him on the advice of a funeral parlour.

While Mr O’Chee claimed his father made an enduring power of attorney in his favour in 2016, Ms Ng said she later held her partner’s EPOA.

When contacted by The Sunday Mail, Mr O’Chee said: “Given the seriousness of the matter and the immense stress and hurt this has caused our family, I have nothing more to say.”

Mr O’Chee claims Ms Ng has failed to give any account of the estate assets since he told her in August that he was going to challenge the will.

Ms Ng said William O’Chee, who ran a number of businesses, had “lost all money” through business dealings well before his death.

Ms Ng told The Sunday Mail she would be consulting a lawyer about Mr O’Chee’s application, but said she hoped a judge would make things right.