Woman sues brother to reclaim over $3 million in proceeds from condo sale
At first glance, this is an inspirational tale of how a Singapore girl raised in a one-bedroom shophouse with her parents and six siblings became a successful entrepreneur, earning almost $50,000 in some months when she was just 25 years old.
It is also a heartrending story of how all her financial contributions, which greatly improved her family’s lifestyle, were never recognised. Her name was excluded from properties that her parents bought with her money, and when her 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 unit. 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 in 2019.
She won the case in 2022 when Singapore’s highest court ordered the brother to refund 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 her income.
High Court judge Chan Seng Onn, who first heard the case in 2021, said: “Yet again, this court has the unpleasant task of witnessing a bitter dispute between family members over money. It is not uncommon in such disputes to find that the events are heavily contested, span over several years and lack documentation.”
Right from the start, the brother claimed his sister had nothing to do with the family assets as everything was paid for by his father, who sold bamboo that was used to make Chinese joss paper items.
But such claims did not match the reality: The family lived in cramped conditions in a rented shophouse, with the parents and six children sleeping in the only bedroom while another child bunked down in a hammock in the living area.
Justice Chan said the sleeping arrangements for the nine of them were very telling: “To me, they demonstrate that father and mother could not be rich. If they were, they would probably not subject themselves and their children to such poor living conditions.”
Things started to look up in 1988 when their enterprising daughter – their sixth child – struck gold after setting up a shop selling leather goods in a popular hotel in the city with a $50,000 loan from a family friend. The business was a hit, and she made steady monthly profits of between $8,000 and almost $50,000 when things were going well.
Her father bought a second-hand Mercedes-Benz and the parents acquired their first home – a private apartment in River Valley. They moved there with the daughter and her two siblings, as the other four were all married and had their own homes by then. This home was later sold and the proceeds used to buy the $3.3 million condo.
Both properties were bought with the income from the daughter’s business, but her name was never listed as an owner. The parents kept her name out of it because they told her that her then boyfriend, a foreigner, might “cheat” her out of her share.
They also forbade her from keeping her money in her own bank account for the same reason, insisting that all her income had to be kept in the parents’ safe at home. When she refused to do so, her parents threatened to kill themselves, forcing her to comply.
So she regularly brought home bundles of cash in $50, $100 and even $1,000 notes and handed them over to her parents for safe-keeping. She reckoned that over a 10-year period, about $2 million was put in the safe to which she had no access.
The case presented three important financial lessons for all families.
If the money was kept in a fixed deposit account instead of the safe for over a decade, it could easily have earned the woman a few hundred thousand dollars in interest. Instead, when she asked about the money after returning from an overseas stint of a few years, she was shocked to discover that it had all been spent.
Two of her older sisters told the court that while some of the money was used to pay the mortgage, their parents also used it for other purposes. For instance, they said their father would take the money to gamble and their mother, who died in 1996, bought gold bars.
It was not disclosed in court what happened to the gold bars. By the time the daughter asked for her money in 2005, her father told her there was nothing left as he had spent it all.
“She was terribly upset and started crying. She asked him how he could have spent all her money since her mother was supposed to be keeping it safe for her. She even called the police, but they told her it was a family matter,” Justice Chan noted.
You can try to make all kinds of claims about how much money you have, but the law will look at evidence such as business and bank records.
The brother claimed that their father paid for the property purchases all by himself because he was a stingy man who let his family live in poor conditions even though he made decent money from his bamboo business. But he could not produce any evidence to support his case.
His successful sister, however, could show that the family’s first property was bought a few months after she started her business. She produced various sales memos from the shop to support her claim.
Even Justice Chan was impressed by her good bookkeeping records. “When I questioned her on the calculation of these profits at the hearing, she explained how she calculated her revenue and profits from the sales memos. These sales memos appear to be contemporaneous documents and their authenticity is not disputed,” he noted.
Many rightful owners of real estate could have avoided painful court tussles if their names had been properly listed as legal owners. But it may be hard to insist on having your way if you want to preserve family harmony, just like how the daughter allowed her parents to keep her name off the property deeds.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, make sure you keep proper records of your financial contributions to family assets. Ultimately, have faith that justice will prevail because somehow, there will be good people who will stand by you.
Throughout the whole saga, two of the woman’s older sisters not only supported her case, but also signed statutory declarations that they would give up any inheritance they might receive from their father as all the money was from their younger sister.
“This indicates their sincerity in assisting the court to ascertain the truth even though it may arguably be against their own financial interests,” Justice Chan said.
The sisters also recalled a family meeting when their younger sister asked their father why he had put their younger brother’s name on their first property and not hers. The father then told her that having the brother’s name on it “was useless” because the money was not his and that, in future, it would all go to her. Indeed, the father’s words were almost prophetic because the court awarded her about $3.1 million of the total sales proceeds of close to $3.3 million.
