Woman with 5 properties wanted elderly dad's 4 homes

A real estate tycoon who liked to buy property for his children became entangled in a bitter lawsuit when one of his daughters ironically claimed that she was a co-owner of his own investment properties.

The 90-year-old businessman, who is illiterate, got caught up in this dispute only because he wanted to use the proceeds from the sale of four investment properties to buy a home for a grandson.

It was then that he discovered that he was not the sole owner of these properties.

His youngest daughter, who helped him with the paperwork for the purchase of the homes for around $11 million in all between 2004 and 2018, had also inserted her name as a co-owner. This was on top of the five homes she already owned in her own name.

To make matters worse, the daughter objected to the sale, claiming that all four homes, which are likely to be worth a lot more today, were hers as they were gifts from her father.

The elderly man was so upset that he sued his daughter to reclaim the properties.

He related his case in the Hokkien dialect and struck High Court Judge Choo Han Teck as a credible witness who testified without embellishment or deception.

Justice Choo not only found that the man had bought the four properties for himself as investments, but he also believed his claim that his daughter had taken advantage of his inability to read by putting her name on the title deeds.

The daughter argued that her name was included as a co-owner because her father had intended to give her these properties. But this claim did not gel with her father's practice of buying properties for each of his six children in their own names.

Indeed, this daughter had five properties purchased in her name by her father, of which three have since been sold.

"That exposes the flaw in (her) contention that the (father) gave the four properties to her as joint tenant," Justice Choo added.

"Were that his intention, he would have given them to her in her sole name, just as he did with those five properties and all the ones he gave to his other children."

So he ruled that the four disputed properties were solely owned by the father and that his daughter was merely holding them for him. He also gave the order to sell the four properties according to the father's wishes.

Justice Choo said: "The defendant describes herself as a filial daughter. It is a description open to debate, depending on whether one thinks that a filial child would surrender to the parents what her parents want, regardless of whether the child thinks it fair or deserving."

But this was a "philosophical issue", and the father did not need extrajudicial considerations to bolster his case because he managed to prove his claim adequately.

The evidence suggested that the family was a "close-knit" one until the father chose to make more gifts by selling his own properties. "Even the tapestry of close-knit families can be unravelled by greed," Justice Choo noted.

Here are three other observations from the judge that all joint property owners should know.

Records of transactions

It goes without saying that the person who can produce all the important documents has a much higher chance of winning a case.

After all, not many people can recollect in detail transactions that took place years or even decades ago.

There are documents aplenty in this case as the father, being illiterate, had relied on his youngest daughter to act as his personal assistant for all his property purchases.

But he disputed that he had intended to have a co-owner, because he could give a vivid description of the sequence of how he ended up buying the four homes as investments for himself.

He told his daughter to take care of the legal documentation and the mortgage as he was "too old to procure a mortgage".

The daughter argued that there was no way that her father was in the dark about the joint ownership as they had owned these properties for many years.

But the father maintained that he did not know that she had inserted her name in the documents as he could not read.

Justice Choo believed the father, given that he had selected the properties and, once the terms were acceptable, had bought them.

"The documentation for each property was done only once, and thereafter was kept away. The (father) had no interest in checking documents he could not read, and it was the (daughter who) kept both the office and personal records for him," the judge added.

Past transactions matter

Judges often scrutinise the past transactions of the parties since their conduct could shed light on their intention.

In this case, the father had been helping all his children to buy properties in their sole names as gifts to them.

While the daughter was not very forthcoming about being the beneficiary of such gifts, she conceded during questioning by her father's lawyer that there were five properties that were bought in her sole name.

Justice Choo noted that such past transactions of buying property for the children in their sole names showed that the father did not have a practice of naming co-owners for homes he intended to give away.

So it could not be true that the father had intended to give away the four properties that he had picked himself by adding his daughter as a joint owner. Moreover, he had paid for everything and this included the deposits, mortgage payments and stamp duties.

There was no evidence that the daughter had contributed to the purchase of these properties.

The parties' conduct

If the claim itself is not convincing, getting more people to repeat the same thing will certainly not get you very far.

In this case, the daughter appeared guarded and evaded answering questions directly many a time regarding her claim over her father's properties. So she gathered four of her siblings to support her case that their father had intended to give the properties to her as a joint owner.

But Justice Choo found their testimonies unhelpful because they repeated each other's words "in a concerted effort to press home a point in which they had no personal knowledge".

Not surprisingly, this strategy backfired because it led the judge to find the daughter's case was not convincing. This was especially so since she did not stake her claim to ownership on the properties when her father first informed her of his decision to sell the real estate in 2019.

The judge noted that she was probably caught unprepared then, and had no time to fabricate her present claim that her father had bought the properties for her.

He added that her conduct and her testimony in court left him with the clear impression that having persuaded the father to secure the mortgage in their joint names, the natural consequence of registering the property similarly in their joint names became naturally advantageous to her because of the father's age.

"I am of the view that she was prepared to inherit the entire property through the right of survivorship. The (father's) decision to sell the properties spoilt (her) plans," Justice Choo added.

What this means is that it often does not pay to stake claims on assets that are not yours because the law always has a way to deny these and return the assets to the rightful owners.

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