Liberia: Judge Wiles, Father-in-law Tussle over Property

The Resident Judge of the 7^th Judicial Circuit in Grand Gedeh County, George Wiles, has filed multiple lawsuits against the biological father of his late wife, Mardea Martin Wiles before the Monthly and Probate Court of Montserrado County.

The suit includes petitions for accounting, revocation of letters of administration, and sequestration. Wiles is seeking the court's approval to revoke the letter of administration obtained by Madea's father, Lysander Martin, which placed him in possession of his daughter's properties.

Martin received his letter of administration from the late Judge Vinton Holder of the Monthly and Probate Court after the death of his daughter.  Holder, after hearing Martin's petition, decided to grant the deceased father the letter of administration requested.

Martin's petition also named one of Mardea's daughters, Ojudh, and her sister as co-administratrix to her estate. In one of the lawsuits, particularly the petition for revocation of the letter of administration, Wiles argued that his wife died without a will and that they had two natural-born children and an adopted child.

But, his late wife left behind properties that she owned before their marriage, to which she did not add his name. 

According to Wiles, due to the nature of his job, which regularly required him to be posted outside of Montserrado County, after the death of his wife, he  “did take appropriate steps to ensure that the properties of his spouse, as well as those jointly owned by them, would be administered properly. “ 

However, the Martin family, in reply to those lawsuits, advised Wiles from using his power as a judge and the court to exercise illegal control over the deceased intestate estate. The family argued that before their daughter's death, she had asked Wiles to administer the affairs of her estate, but failed to do so, leading to the distrust that brought the family onboard.

The Martin said their daughter did not make the judge administrator because he “became nonchalant, uninvolved and unsupportive to all matters about these properties.”

“Judge Wiles banished the adopted child, and he only made a single payment of the child’s school fees and he has refused to look back since,” Martin's family alleged. “ He sent the two biological children to the US to their half-sibling (born unto the judge by a woman he did not marry) and instructed her to disallow the entire Martin family from any form of access to the now 5-year-old twins.”

“Wiles' action rendered him unfit to administer his deceased wife’s estate as he has separated his own family, abandoned his children, and is bent on alienating their maternal link from their lives.”

They claimed that Wiles is trying to amass wealth unto himself and is using the innocent children as a means to access his wife’s estate.

“Mardea was decisive in her actions in excluding Judge Wiles from handling the affairs of her estate, and she named her mother as one of the beneficiaries of her estate accounts before her death,” he claimed.

Before her death, Mardea owned an estate in the Rehab Community, Lower Johnsonville, where her father is currently the administrator.