Singer Rik Rok, who collaborated with Shaggy for hit song It Wasn’t Me, is caught up in a bitter feud between his mother and half-sister over his dead father’s near-£1 million fortune.
Rickardo Ducent, 52, says half-sister Sarah Ducent cut off ties with their father and insisted she “wanted nothing more to do with him”, leading him to cut her out of the inheritance when he died 18 years ago.
Sarah, however, denies there was any estrangement, and is now fighting for a share of the fortune from assets to London and Jamaica, worth more than £900,000, which was left to Rickardo’s mother Dorothy Ducent.
The British-Jamaican singer, known professionally as Rik Rok, co-wrote the smash-hit It Wasn’t Me with Shaggy and performed lead vocals on the track, which has clocked up over 1 billion plays on Spotify and was the best-selling single of 2001 in the UK.
The song, which reached number one in ten countries, helped him to carve out a career as a solo artist and he went to perform several more collaborations with Shaggy.
Rickardo and Sarah’s father, Herbert, was an entrepreneur who established a successful construction company in Jamaica, as well as running a thriving bakery business in Coldharbour lane, Brixton.
When he died aged 63 in 2006, he left behind two neighbouring properties in Peak Hill, Sydenham, jointly valued at around £900,000, as well as Jamaican assets which have yet to be definitively valued by the UK courts.
In his will, drawn up in Jamaica, Herbert named his widow Dorothy as his main heir and left nothing behind for Sarah who says she is now penniless and living “on the breadline”.
She is seeking to convince Judge Ann Evans-Gordon that she should receive “reasonable provision” from the estate, and must also prove that the dispute is one that should be settled in the English courts.
Giving evidence, Rickardo was challenged that he knew little of his father’s relationship with Sarah, but the singer insisted: “My father and I were quite close so we talked about Sarah.”
Her barrister, Oliver Ingham, asserted to the court: “It’s not correct that after leaving Jamaica to come to the UK for college she was estranged from Herbert or that she cut off relations with him.”
But Rickardo responded: “That’s what he told me”, adding that a family friend with whom Sarah was lodging had called up Herbert to "complain to my father about her behaviour".
“On his next trip to the UK, he confronted her about it and an argument ensued,” said the singer.
“My father told me that she declared she wanted nothing more to do with him and he said ‘are you sure that’s what you want because if we’re done we’re done’.”
Sarah denies the rift and says they stayed close over the years, describing him outside court as a “brilliant man” and saying: “I reject the idea of any estrangement”.
Her lawyer claimed that Herbert considered the UK to be his home while Jamaica was a “secondary residence”, and pointed out a delay of nearly 17 years in his family claiming Jamaican domicile for Herbert.
This was a "shift in their position motivated by the litigation itself”, said Mr Ingham. “Sarah refutes the assertion that the deceased permanently abandoned the UK after suffering a stroke in 1997.”
However Dorothy’s barrister, Jian Jun Liew, rejected the idea that Herbert ever wanted to “anchor” himself to the UK in his latter years, focusing on the fact that in 1983 he had moved his entire family back to Jamaica after spending 20 years in London working at various trades.
“The relocation of Herbert’s entire family to Jamaica in 1983 was wholly consistent with the loss of any domicile of choice of England and Wales on the deceased’s part and the acquisition of a domicile of choice in Jamaica,” he argued.
After the hearing, Sarah, a former civil servant, said she is now living in poverty in London and that any money from her dad’s estate could transform her life.
“I am hurt by the whole thing and I’ve lost my whole family”, she said. "My dad died, but on the day he died I didn’t think I would end up being in the position I am today going through all this heartache. I don’t have a step-mother any more.
“This money would make a great difference in my life, I am on the breadline right now.”
The judge reserved her decision to a later date.
