How parents can prevent disputes over their properties
Source: Straits Times
Article Date: 26 Jul 2025
Author: Tan Ooi Boon
Many families could have avoided painful court tussles over their real estate if they have made the reason behind such purchases clear to everyone.
Many families could avoid painful court tussles over real estate if they make the reason behind property purchases clear to everyone.
Many parents, for instance, like to include a child as a co-owner for administrative purposes or to get better loan terms for having a young owner, without the intention of gifting the property to that child.
If this is the purpose behind such an arrangement, disputes can be avoided if the parents state clearly in a will or in e-mails circulated to the family that such properties are to be shared among all the children.
Similarly, if you have paid for the family’s private property, ensure that you are named as a co-owner if you want to preserve your share in it. Also make sure you keep good records of your financial contributions to family assets, as such documents could help you to stake your claim in a dispute.
Rightful owner’s name not listed
A successful entrepreneur improved the lifestyle of her family by buying private homes for her parents and siblings but somehow, her parents favoured their other children instead.
Her name was excluded from properties that her parents had bought with her money. When the mother died, other siblings were named as beneficiaries in the will.
Three decades or so from the day she started taking care of her family, the woman filed a lawsuit to take back what she felt rightfully belonged to her.
The suit was sparked when her youngest brother wanted to pocket $3.3 million in proceeds from the sale of the family’s condominium. He and his elderly father were the joint owners, but he became the sole administrator of the asset when the father lost his mental capacity.
She won the case when Singapore’s highest court ordered the brother to refund about $3.1 million, 96 per cent of the sum, because he paid only a small amount for the apartment’s down payment. It was bought with the proceeds from the sale of the family’s first apartment, which was funded entirely by the daughter’s income.
She could produce various sales memos from her retail outlet to support her claim that the family’s first property was bought a few months after she started her business of selling high-end leather products.
As her record keeping was thorough, she could prove her financial contribution to her family’s homes, which determined her stakes, even though her name was not listed as a co-owner.
A joint owner does not always own the whole property
A father of four children bought a shophouse, but only added his son’s name as a co-owner in order to get better loan terms. The mortgage instalments for the property, which was used for the family’s hardware business, were paid entirely by the father.
When he died, the son, as joint owner, thought the shophouse would be his by virtue of the often-cited “right of survivorship”.
His sisters continued to run the business and all was well until they started asking their brother if he was going to sell the shophouse and split the proceeds among them.
He told them that as the surviving joint owner, the shophouse was his alone. He refused to budge, so his sisters took him to court to secure their share in the $500,000 property.
The brother lost the case because he could not prove that his late father had intended to benefit him solely, just because he was named as the joint owner.
If the only child is listed as the joint owner of the family home, there is a strong presumption that the parents would have intended that their child inherit the property.
But the number of children the parent has is a factor that weakens the strength of such a presumption.
What this means is that the more children a parent has, the less basis there will be to presume that the joint ownership is intended to be a gift to that child.
As the father had four children, all of them could share in the property because the son could not produce compelling evidence to show why he was preferred over his three sisters.
So the lesson here is simply this – as real estate is likely to be the most valuable asset for most families, it pays for parents to have good legacy planning so that their children don’t have to fight over it.
Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.
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