A yoga teacher who was cut out of her husband’s estate weeks before his death has won a landmark High Court battle after a judge ruled that legal documents designed to strip her of her inheritance were a “sham” — ending a 14-year legal fight that began with her brother-in-law’s fears she would flee to Brazil with her children.
Gabriela Teixeira, 51, had been locked in bitter litigation with her late husband’s brother, Amir Moaven, since the death of wealthy London property investor and restaurateur Abbas Moaven in 2012. Abbas died of cancer aged 45, leaving his estate in equal third shares to his widow and their two children. But weeks before his death, while seriously ill at home, he had signed trust documents declaring that four properties — worth more than £3 million at the time — were not entirely his, but shared with his mother and brother. The effect was to substantially diminish, and potentially eliminate, the inheritance available to Gabriela and her children.
Crucially, lawyers’ notes from a meeting between Abbas’s solicitor and Amir during that period revealed the motive behind the documents. The notes recorded Amir’s concern that after Abbas died, Gabriela “might disappear with the two children to Brazil” and asked how that could be prevented and how her access to funds from the property assets could be blocked. Gabriela’s barrister told Deputy Master Timothy Bowles that those notes demonstrated “a clear aim of defeating a claim by Gabriela and/or her children against the estate.”
Deputy Master Bowles agreed. He rejected Amir’s account of the trust documents as a “fiction” and ruled that the story behind them was a “sham” designed to prevent Abbas’s widow from accessing the bulk of his wealth. “I have no doubt that the burden on Gabriela and her children to provide convincing evidence of ‘sham’, to a high standard, has been well and truly met,” he said.
With the four properties — including former family homes in Queen’s Gate, Holland Park and Brasenose House, Kensington, as well as a rental property in Maida Hill — now restored to the estate, lawyers estimate the total value could reach as much as £5 million, though the exact figure has yet to be calculated due to complex tax and debt issues.
The case spans a story that began in 2000, when Gabriela first met Abbas at The Gate, his restaurant near Notting Hill Gate. They married in 2002 and went on to live at a succession of high-end addresses in some of London’s most sought-after neighbourhoods. When Abbas was diagnosed with cancer in 2009, Gabriela, a birth doula and yoga teacher originally from Brazil, had no indication the properties were anything other than his.
Amir, now 56, had argued that the properties were placed in Abbas’s name for “cultural reasons” — because Abbas was the elder brother — and claimed they had always been held in equal shares between Abbas, Amir and their mother under a long-standing agreement. His barrister Lydia Pemberton described the dispute as a “very bitter family dispute” but insisted the documents were a legitimate reflection of that arrangement. The judge found otherwise.
Gabriela’s barrister told the court that she had been unable to sustain the lifestyle she enjoyed during Abbas’s lifetime on her income as a doula and that it was “deeply unsatisfactory” that 14 years on, she and her two children — Elis, now 22, and Aryan, 19, who have grown from infants to adults over the course of the litigation — had still not received their inheritance. Both children supported their mother’s claim throughout.
A further hearing to determine how much Gabriela should receive under the will is yet to take place. Under its terms, the children’s shares are held until they reach a “designated age” of up to 35.
