Kaluma: No slay queen hurt me, new law therefore isn’t revenge

Homa Bay Town MP Peter Kaluma during an interview with KTN News TV on Thursday morning. [Standard]

Homa Bay Town MP Peter Kaluma says his inspiration to sponsor a Bill that locks out secret lovers from deceased partners’ wealth wasn’t drawn from an unpleasant experience at the hands of slay queens.

“Slay queen” is a slang word used to refer to a young woman who isn’t spectacularly brilliant, lives in the urban centre, loves the fine things in life, has no credible source of income, and weaponises sex for commercial gain.

“I have no horrible experience at the hands of slay queens. I’ve heard people claiming that I sponsored the Bill after slay queens broke my heart. The motivation of the new law was to bring sanity in property succession contests,” Kaluma told The Standard on Thursday.

According to the lawmaker, he had witnessed cases where women, who a deceased person parted ways with several years ago, would return upon his death to claim a share of his wealth, leaving his immediate family “embarrassed and confused”.

“In some cases, the [spurned] women would even obtain court orders to stop the deceased’s burial amid property disputes,” he said.

The MP cited the case of a prominent KNUT official from Nyanza who died, and his property shared among “strange women”, with one of the secret lovers being allocated a third of his estate.

“The [KNUT] official had only one known wife, but his wealth went out to other strange women, who had filed succession cases at the High Court in Nairobi,” he said.

“The union official’s widow, consequently, suffered depression and died as the property case delayed in court,” said Kaluma.

According to the legislator, the loose meaning of “spouse” in law, gave the “strange women” in the KNUT official’s life to reap what they hadn’t worked for.

Kaluma, however, clarified that, unlike secret lovers, children born out of formally recognised marriages would still be in a position to inherit their deceased parents’ property.

Expressing his delight at the adoption of the new law, Kaluma, on Wednesday, said he was happy that “slay queens and woman-eaters have fallen”.

[Today is] my happiest day as a legislator. Strangers who have been pirating on the property of the dead have been stopped. Only persons who contracted a valid marriage with the deceased will now claim the estate of the deceased,” Kaluma told The Standard in a text message.

“Children have also been protected, whether or not their biological parents were married. Slay queens and woman-eaters have fallen!”

President Kenyatta assented to the Law of Succession (Amendment) Bill 2019 sponsored by Kaluma on November 12, 2019, and passed by the National Assembly.

The Bill sought to amend the definition of the word dependant so as to lock out “illegitimate” spouses from inheriting the property of a deceased person.

In the new law, a dependant is defined as “the spouse and children of the deceased, whether or not maintained by the deceased immediately prior to his death”.

Others, who are considered as dependants, are the deceased's parents, step-parents, grandparents, grandchildren, step-children, children whom the deceased had taken into his family as his own, brothers, sisters, half-brothers, and half-sisters, who were being maintained by the deceased immediately prior to his death.

The law, however, gives room for the nonconventional dependants, including secret lovers, to fight for their rights if they feel aggrieved by the decision to lock them out of the deceased’s wealth.

“A person not named in this section shall not be a dependant for the purposes of this Act unless the person proves [he or she was] maintained by the deceased for a period of two years prior to the deceased's death.”

While justifying the Bill in November 2019, Kaluma said: “The main aim of the Bill is to avoid situations where opportunistic schemers successfully claim a stake in a deceased person's estate hence disenfranchising the legitimate heirs of the deceased.”

“The Bill seeks to provide clarity on who a dependant of a deceased person is. It gives stronger protection to the spouse, children, and extended family of a deceased person in succession matters.”

“The Law of Succession (Amendment) Bill 2019 will streamline the administration of succession matters in the country,” President Kenyatta said on Wednesday, November 17 after assenting to the Bill.

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