Neo Hui Ling v Ang Ah Sew

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Lai Siu Chiu J
• Judgment Date: 23 March 2012
• Neutral Citation: [2012] SGHC 65
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Originating Summons No. 488 of 2010/C
• Year: 2012
• Published date: 09 April 2012
• Hearing Date: 01 November 2011,31 October 2011,02 November 2011
• Plaintiff Counsel: Lisa Sam Hui Min (Lisa Sam & Company)
• Defendant Counsel: Tan Siah Yong (ComLaw LLC)
• Subject Matter: Trusts,Resulting Trusts,Presumed Resulting Trusts,Equity,Proprietary Estoppel
• Citation: [2012] SGHC 65

Lai Siu Chiu J :

This unfortunate case was the culmination of much unhappiness between a daughter and her mother. Neo Hui Ling (“the plaintiff”) brought this Action against her mother Ang Ah Sew (“the defendant”) in respect of a house located at 55 Jalan Chengam, Singapore 578338 (“the Property”). The Property was held in the joint names of the parties, and the plaintiff applied for an order that the joint tenancy be severed and that the Property be sold. I granted the application on 29 July 2010, and also ordered that the net proceeds of the sale be paid to the plaintiff, subject to 50% thereof being held by the plaintiff’s solicitors as stakeholders, pending further orders from the court regarding the parties’ respective interests in the Property.

The present proceedings before me were to determine the extent of the parties’ interests in the Property. It should be noted that the defendant was legally aided in these proceedings. On 2 November 2011, after the parties had been cross-examined on their affidavits of evidence-in-chief (“AEIC”) which were filed pursuant to an order of court dated 24 May 2011, I ordered that the defendant’s claim to 50% of the sales proceeds be dismissed and that the sum held by the plaintiff’s solicitors be released to the plaintiff. In other words, the plaintiff was to receive 100% of the sales proceeds with nothing going to the defendant. As the defendant has appealed against my order (in Civil Appeal No 137 of 2011), I shall now set out my grounds.

In a joint tenancy, the co-owners own a piece of property jointly in undivided, indistinct shares. Once severed, the joint tenancy becomes a tenancy in common which is capable of having distinct shares. This court had to determine what shares in equity the Property should be divided into between the parties and thereby determine the division of the sale proceeds.

The Property was a house which was purchased for $1.88m on 3 September 2007. It was subsequently sold for $3.4m on 9 June 2011. After deducting the costs of the sale, property tax, Central Provident Fund (“CPF”) redemption monies and other miscellaneous expenses, there was a balance of $1,959,047.05 of which 50%, or $979,523.53 was held by the plaintiff’s solicitors (Lisa Sam & Company) pending the resolution of this matter.

The defendant based her claim on two equitable doctrines. First, she claimed to be entitled to 50% of the sale proceeds on the basis that the parties had intended to hold the Property as equitable joint tenants. This would involve consideration of a presumed intention resulting trust, more specifically what is colloquially known as the “purchase money” variant. The second doctrine on which she claimed an equity in the Property was that of proprietary estoppel, which remedy was at the court’s discretion.

Background

The facts of the case are at once few and many. The basic premise of this application, as stated above, was that the joint tenancy was severed and the defendant claimed equitable relief. Yet, the factual background of the case as presented by the parties spanned the lifetime of the plaintiff and contained allegation upon counter-allegation of instances of inequitable behaviour by both parties. In cases brought in equity, the most important findings relate to whether the facts of the case fit within the contours of recognised equitable doctrines, and whether the facts justify the court granting equitable relief. For that reason, only the background of the case will be set out here, and the myriad and sometimes disputed facts of the case will be set out in more detail as each equitable doctrine is considered. One point that should be noted at the outset is that although the defendant repeatedly stressed the strength of her relationship with the plaintiff, this would be relevant only insofar as it substantiated the factors constituting the doctrines under which she claimed equitable relief. The supposed closeness between mother and daughter would not be a relevant factor in the abstract.

The defendant’s husband, who was the plaintiff’s father, walked out on the defendant and their four daughters in 1983. The plaintiff was the second daughter, and she had an elder sister and a pair of younger twin sisters (“the twins”). Since that time, the defendant raised all four children singlehandedly, working as a factory worker and running small businesses to make ends meet. She applied to the court for a separation order and maintenance from her husband in 1983, and was awarded $300 monthly maintenance. The defendant obtained a divorce from her husband in 1998, by which time all of her daughters had started working and the family’s financial difficulties eased.

Until about 1998, the defendant and all her daughters were staying in a Housing Development Board (“HDB”) flat located in Choa Chu Kang. After her divorce, the defendant sold this flat and purchased another HDB flat in Bishan (“the Bishan flat”) for $360,000. This was conveyed into the joint names of the defendant and all her daughters save for one of the twins. Each joint owner made varying contributions to the purchase price of the Bishan flat. The defendant claimed to have contributed about $10,000 cash and about $610 from her CPF moneys to the purchase price. She also claimed to have contributed about $94 towards the monthly mortgage sum for an unspecified amount of time. The plaintiff on her part contributed $18,340 cash and also helped to service the monthly mortgage sum.

The entire family lived in the Bishan flat until sometime in 2001 when the plaintiff’s elder sister wished to divest her interest in the Bishan flat because she was about to get married and wanted to purchase a HDB flat with her future husband. The twin sister who was a co-owner also wished to do the same in anticipation of marriage in the future. The plaintiff agreed to purchase her two sisters’ shares, based on a valuation of about $310,000. She took out a mortgage to finance the buyout, and serviced the monthly instalments without any assistance from the defendant. The Bishan flat thenceforth was in the joint names of the plaintiff and the defendant. After the buy-out, the plaintiff’s elder sister moved out followed by the plaintiff in 2004.

In 2005, the plaintiff purchased a condominium at Eden Grove (“the Eden Grove property”) and conveyed it into the joint names of herself and the defendant. Neither of the parties lived there, and this property was sold sometime in 2007.

The Property at issue in the present case was purchased in 2007 and conveyed into the joint names of the parties. Around this time, the plaintiff suggested that the Bishan flat would be sold, to which the defendant agreed. As will be seen later, one of the defendant’s arguments before this court was that the sale of the Bishan flat served to substantiate her claim in proprietary estoppel.

The defendant and the twins moved from the Bishan flat to live with the plaintiff and her then fiancé (now husband) Keith Anthony Lazaroo (“Mr Lazaroo”) at the Property. This was the beginning of much discord between the parties with the twins siding with the defendant and Mr Lazaroo siding with the plaintiff. According to the plaintiff, there was constant bickering between the defendant and the twins (from the time the parties resided at the Bishan flat so much so that the plaintiff moved out from the flat). The plaintiff was herself critical of the twins’ behaviour. Each side made numerous allegations of the other party’s intolerable behaviour, which allegations made up the bulk of the affidavits placed before this court. This sad state of affairs culminated in a strange incident in which the defendant and the twins engaged a medium to enter the Property on the night of 2 March 2010 and who forcibly performed ritualistic cleansing on the plaintiff, much to the plaintiff’s annoyance. The defendant later explained that she felt that the plaintiff had become very bad tempered and when the defendant consulted the medium, she was advised that the plaintiff was possessed by spirits and needed to be subject to certain rituals. The defendant emphasised that she had not meant to harm the plaintiff by her well-meaning Action. Nevertheless, the plaintiff told the defendant the very next day (3 March 2010), that the plaintiff wished to sell the Property and that the defendant and the twins would have to move out. The plaintiff herself moved out on 4 March 2010 but the defendant and the twins remained behind and refused to leave until they were evicted by the Sheriff pursuant to a writ of possession obtained by the plaintiff.

The Property could not be sold unless both parties, who were joint tenants, agreed to the sale. On 18 May 2010, the plaintiff brought the first tranche of this Action under s 18 of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act (Cap 322, 2007 Rev Ed) seeking an order that the Property be sold. I granted an order in terms on 29 July 2010, directing that the Property be sold and the defendant remove all her personal belongings and vacate the Property within two weeks of the order. The defendant (and the twins) did not obey this order and all three were evicted by the Sheriff on 16 February 2011. The defendant had filed an appeal (in Civil Appeal No 142 of 2010) against my order for sale (see Neo Hui Ling v Ang Ah Sew [2010] SGHC 328) but did not pursue her appeal. The defendant claimed in court (and in her affidavit filed on 1 September 2010) that her lack of funds precluded her from pursuing her appeal. She had nevertheless relied on Civil Appeal No 142 of 2010 as the ground to apply to court for a stay of execution on the order for sale of the Property, which application was granted by another court on 16 September 2010. The parties came before me again in October/November 2011 to determine the extent of their respective interests in the Property.

The presumed intention resulting trust

The defendant’s claim...