A bitter family dispute over the final resting place of late KCB Bank employee Rosemary Chemutai Koech-Kimwatu has taken a dramatic turn after court documents revealed that she did not name her husband as her next of kin in her official employment records.
Instead, Rosemary’s workplace records listed her sister, Judy Koech-Oyamo, and her eldest son, Charles Migwe Kimwatu, as her designated next of kin.
The revelation reportedly came as a shock to her husband, Kevin Migwe Kimwatu, who says he only learned about the arrangement on Wednesday, August 26, 2026, when he visited Lee Funeral Home to follow up on plans for his wife’s burial.
What he encountered there would soon trigger a legal battle over who has the right to determine how Rosemary should be laid to rest.
According to court filings, mortuary officials showed Kevin an official letter from KCB Bank dated August 25. The letter, signed by the bank’s Head of Shared Services, Risk, Compliance and Governance, authorised Rosemary’s sister and eldest son to collect her remains, relying on the next-of-kin information contained in her employment records.
For Kevin, the discovery was unacceptable.
He rushed to court, arguing that a next-of-kin declaration made for employment purposes could not override the rights of a legally married spouse when it came to the burial of a deceased partner.
Kevin says he and Rosemary had been legally married for 13 years, having exchanged vows at St Austin’s Catholic Church in 2013. They were also parents to four children.
Yet, according to his court affidavit, he was allegedly excluded from funeral meetings and planning after Rosemary died on August 21, 2026.
He claims Rosemary’s parents, Paul and Beatrice Koech, together with her sister Judy, shut him out of the funeral arrangements and proceeded with plans without his participation.
At the heart of the dispute is where Rosemary should be buried.
Her biological family wants her to be laid to rest at her parents’ home in Chepseon, Kericho County.
Kevin has strongly opposed that proposal.
He wants his wife buried at his ancestral home in Matasia, Ngong, Kajiado County.
The disagreement has transformed what would ordinarily have been a family’s mourning period into a courtroom confrontation involving relatives, an employer and the funeral home.
Kevin has also turned his anger toward KCB Bank, accusing the financial institution of improperly involving itself in a private family dispute.
His lawyers argue that the bank had no legal authority to determine who should take possession of Rosemary’s remains or dictate arrangements concerning her burial.
They maintain that neither the Employment Act nor the Law of Succession Act gives an employer jurisdiction to decide how an employee’s body should be disposed of.
The case has also brought to light difficulties that had existed within Rosemary and Kevin’s marriage.
In his affidavits, Kevin acknowledges that their relationship had experienced challenges. However, he insists that marital difficulties did not terminate their marriage or strip him of his rights as her husband.
Statements reportedly given by Rosemary’s family to investigators paint a different picture, indicating that the couple had been experiencing serious domestic and financial difficulties and had separated for about four months before her death.
Kevin, however, maintains that the situation had changed.
He told the court that they had recently reconciled and that Rosemary was planning to return home.
That claim has now become an important part of the legal battle, particularly because the KCB employment records naming her sister and son as next of kin had not been changed.
The question of what Rosemary intended — and who should have the final say over her burial — now sits at the centre of the dispute.
On Friday, August 28, 2026, Senior Principal Magistrate Agnes Mwangi certified Kevin’s application as urgent and issued protective interim orders.
The orders placed a temporary halt on any attempt by Rosemary’s parents, siblings, relatives or their agents to bury her without Kevin’s consent and direct involvement.
The family has therefore been forced to put the funeral plans on hold as the court considers the competing claims.
For Kevin, the battle is not simply about where his wife will be buried.
It is about whether a document filled out at her workplace can determine who controls her final journey — and whether a husband of 13 years can be excluded from the burial of his wife because his name was missing from an employment next-of-kin form.
For Rosemary’s family, however, the dispute has opened a deeply painful chapter at a time when they are still mourning her death.
As the legal battle unfolds, her remains remain at the centre of an increasingly bitter question: Who truly has the final say over a person’s last journey — the family that raised them, the spouse they married, or the person they named as their next of kin?
