Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal upholds ruling protecting inheritance rights of same-sex couples, rejecting government bid to quash it
- Court rejects government appeal of ruling from 2020 that denying gay homeowner right to pass property to husband constitutes discrimination
- Original review launched by the late Edgar Ng in 2019, with his husband Henry Li taking over case after Ng’s death
Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal has upheld a decision to support a gay homeowner who asked the judiciary to ensure his husband’s inheritance rights, dismissing a government bid to quash the ruling.
The ruling on Tuesday came after a legal battle that started in 2019 when the late Edgar Ng Hon-lam applied for a judicial review of the city’s inheritance laws after he learned he could not bequeath the flat he had bought under the Home Ownership Scheme to his husband, Henry Li Yik-ho.
“It has been incredibly painful to have lost Edgar. It added insult to injury – that the government repeatedly argued in open court I am not Edgar’s husband and should be treated as a stranger to him, while I was still mourning,” Li wrote after the decision was handed down.
“I hope the government will respect today’s judgment and at long last give Edgar the respect and dignity he’d always deserved.”
Daly & Associates, the law firm that appeared for Li, said in the same statement the court had affirmed that discrimination inflicted oppressive injustice and long lasting damage on LGBTQ people.