A man bought an HDB shophouse worth $500,000 and added his son name as co-owner to get better loan terms. The mortgage instalments for the property, which was used for the family hardware business, were paid entirely by the man. He died, and his son automatically inherited the property by the right of survivorship as joint owner to the property. His widow took over and ran the hardware business until she died a year later. His daughters continued to run the business and all was well, until they started to ask their brother about the shophouse. The brother refused to share the shophouse with his sisters and had taken the whole shophouse for himself as surviving joint owner. The sisters brought this case to the court
The High Judge ruled in favor of the sisters. The brother was deemed to be holding the shophouse on the father's behalf. Since the father's died without will, the distribution of the property will be distributed according to Intestate Succession Act. And since the mother's will stated that all asset is to be distributed equally, the property is to be distributed equally among all four children.
Not all joint owners are equal under the law, because the ones who pay are deemed the real owners. In truth, it is simply the legal consequence of holding property as joint owners: The surviving owner becomes the sole owner in name but this does not automatically come with absolute ownership if there are eligible claimants.The joint ownership rule favours married couples because there is legal presumption of “gifting” between spouses even if only one of them had paid for the property. So if one spouse dies, the entire property automatically passes to the surviving one.
The son made much ado over the fact that his father did not remove him as a joint owner even after the mortgage loan was repaid. But the judge noted that mere inaction would not give rise to a new outcome unless there was supporting evidence. So the father’s failure to remove the son as a joint owner was more likely because he viewed himself as the sole owner and that he could deal with the property without seeking the son’s consent.
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 kid inherit the property. But in the context of a parent-child relationship, the number of children the parent has is a factor that weakens the strength of such a presumption. The more children a parent has, the less basis there will be to presume that the parent’s transfer of property of substantial value to a single child was intended to be a gift to that child.
