A woman who claimed to have lived with a deceased Nairobi man as his wife for nearly three decades has lost her bid to reopen a succession dispute and exhume his body for DNA testing in a case that has exposed the painful intersection of inheritance battles, informal unions and proof of paternity.
Mary Mbuva had moved to the High Court seeking to overturn an earlier judgment that rejected her claim to the estate of Mathews Lemmy Adema, arguing that the court wrongly found she was neither his wife nor that her daughter, Sharon, was his child.
She also sought orders for the exhumation of Mr Adema’s body so that DNA samples could be obtained to determine the paternity of her daughter, Sharon Peon.
The dispute traces its roots to succession proceedings filed after Mr Adema died intestate in October 2018. In the original succession case, Mr Adema’s widow, Margaret Mwenje, and their children petitioned for control of the estate, listing several bank accounts and properties in Donholm, Tassia and Chavakali among his assets.
But Ms Mbuva objected to the petition, insisting she, too, was Mr Adema’s wife and that she had been excluded, together with her daughter, from the list of beneficiaries.
In testimony during the succession hearing, Ms Mbuva told the court she cohabited with Mr Adema for years and that the relationship was known to both families. She claimed the deceased paid rent and school fees for her daughter and that they attended funeral meetings after his death before later discovering they had been excluded from burial arrangements and inheritance plans.
She further alleged that after Mr Adema’s death, she and her daughter fell into financial hardship, including rent arrears and interruption of Sharon’s education.
However, the court in its November 2025 judgment rejected her claims after finding she had failed to prove either a customary marriage or a presumption of marriage through cohabitation.
The court held that although she claimed to have been married under Kamba customary law, she failed to provide evidence showing that the required customary rites had been performed.
The judge also ruled that she did not provide sufficient independent evidence showing that the couple publicly held themselves out as husband and wife for the court to presume a marriage existed through long cohabitation.
The court similarly rejected Sharon’s claim to the estate after finding there was no birth certificate or DNA evidence proving paternity.
During the hearing, Ms Mbuva admitted her daughter had declined to undergo DNA testing. The court ruled that the burden of proving paternity lay with the person making the allegation and found there was insufficient evidence to conclude Sharon was Mr Adema’s daughter.
Following that setback, Ms Mbuva returned to court seeking a review of the judgment. She argued that the court committed errors on the face of the record, denied her the opportunity to call a key witness and failed to order DNA testing.
She further argued that her written submissions had not been properly considered and claimed this violated her constitutional right to a fair hearing.
The application escalated the family dispute further by seeking exhumation of the deceased’s body for DNA extraction.
But the respondents opposed the application, arguing it did not meet the legal threshold required for review of a judgment. They also argued that compelling DNA testing in the circumstances would violate constitutional rights to privacy, especially because Sharon herself had declined testing.
In dismissing the application, the court held that applications for review can only succeed where there is discovery of new evidence, an obvious error on the face of the record or other sufficient legal reason.
The court cited previous appellate decisions stating that review is not meant to give dissatisfied parties a second opportunity to re-argue their cases simply because they disagree with the conclusions reached.
The judge found that Mbuva was merely challenging conclusions already reached on the evidence presented during trial, particularly on whether she was married to Mr Adema and whether Sharon was his daughter.
“The application must fail,” the court ruled while dismissing the bid for review, exhumation and DNA testing.
The ruling left Margaret Mwenje and Lilian Kavochi Adema as the administrators of the estate while Ms Mbuva remains locked out unless she successfully appeals.
