Mother of child fathered by slain 'playboy' millionaire loses appeal to prove she was his wife

One of five different women who had children with a slain multimillionaire has failed to convince B.C.'s top court the pair had a spousal relationship that would entitle her to at least half of an estate worth up to $21 million.

B.C.'s Appeal Court upheld a lower court finding Thursday that the woman — known as Mother 1 — did not have a "marriage-like relationship" with Gang Yuan, a rich "playboy" chopped into 108 pieces after he was killed at a West Vancouver mansion in May 2015.

The ruling is the latest development in a court battle that has been ongoing since the first of a series of women stepped forward to file paternity suits against Yuan's estate in the wake of his grisly death.

The stakes were high. Yuan died unmarried and without a will. If Mother 1 had succeeded in convincing the court to treat her as his spouse, she would have been entitled to at least half his fortune, with the other half going to his children.

As it stands, the children are entitled to share the total value of the estate between themselves.

Yuan's killer, Li Zhao, was sentenced last year to 10 years and six months for manslaughter and interfering with human remains.

Zhao was married to Yuan's cousin and the pair had spent years as friends and business partners in a farming venture in Saskatchewan.

According to trial testimony, Yuan had suggested he might marry Zhao's beloved daughter and belittled a device he had invented for hunting.

The court heard Zhao struck Yuan with a hammer, shot him with a gun designed to kill vermin and then cut him up as he imagined he might a bear. The judge hearing the case described the circumstances as "unquestionably bizarre."

The battle to divvy up Yuan's estate was equally confounding. A second woman also made a spousal claim, but she settled during trial.

That left Mother 1 versus the administrators of Yuan's estate and his five children.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Elliott Myers, the judge who heard Mother 1's claim in 2019, attached a spreadsheet to his ruling that set a chronology against columns listed for Mothers 1 through 5.

According to court records, Mother 1 met Yuan in 2004 in China when she was 16.

She lived in his parents' home from the summer of 2004 until December of that year, when she left so Yuan could marry another woman to help him move to Canada in what a judge said was "clearly immigration fraud."