1 This case is yet another episode in the long series of litigation that has flowed from the liquidation of Hin Leong Trading (Pte) Ltd (“Hin Leong”) and the bankruptcy of its controlling family comprising Mr Lim Oon Kuin (“Mr OK Lim”), Ms Lim Huey Ching (“Ms Lim”) and Mr Lim Chee Meng (also known as Evan, “Mr Evan Lim”) (collectively, the “Lims”). The claimant is the grandson of Mr OK Lim and son of the late Ms Lim Huey Yih (“Deceased”). His claim is that a property registered in Ms Lim’s name is held on trust for his late mother, and should thus be administered under his mother’s estate instead of Ms Lim’s bankruptcy estate. ¹

2 The claimant claims that there is a common intention constructive trust or resulting trust over the property. Alternatively, he makes a claim in unjust enrichment against his aunt, Ms Lim. For reasons I explain below, I dismiss all of his claims.

3 The claimant, Mr Denzel Pak Juin Tern (“Mr Pak”), is the only son of the Deceased and the sole beneficiary of her estate. ² The Deceased was the daughter of Mr OK Lim and Mdm Tan Sook Eng (“Mdm Tan”) and the sister of Ms Lim and Mr Evan Lim. ³ After the Deceased passed away on 29 June 2017, Ms Lim and Mdm Tan were appointed the joint administrators of her estate on 9 July 2018 in HCF/P 294/2018 (“P 294”). ⁴ Several years later, on 2 April 2025, Mr Pak was made the sole administrator of the estate. ⁵

4 The Lims were shareholder-directors of Hin Leong and have since 2020 been embroiled in numerous lawsuits in Singapore due to the unravelling of a large‑scale trade financing fraud. ⁶ Relevant to the present dispute is HC/S 805/2020 (“S 805”), a suit commenced by Hin Leong’s liquidators (then judicial managers) against the Lims for fraudulent trading and breaches of directors’ duties, among other things. ⁷ In May 2021, Hin Leong’s liquidators obtained worldwide Mareva injunctions against each of the Lims, prohibiting them from dealing with their assets up to the full sum of US$3.5bn claimed in S 805. ⁸ From late September to early October 2024, the Lims entered into several consent judgments for S 805 and other suits wherein Ms Lim was ordered to pay damages totalling over US$4bn plus interest and costs. ⁹

5 Ms Lim filed for bankruptcy on 14 October 2024 in HC/B 3859/2024 (“B 3859”) and was adjudged bankrupt on 19 December 2024. ¹⁰ The first defendant to the present action, Mr Leow Quek Shiong (“Mr Leow”), and the second defendant, Ms Seah Roh Lin (“Ms Seah”), were appointed as the joint and several private trustees in bankruptcy (collectively, the “PTIBs”) of Ms Lim. ¹¹ Ms Lim remains an undischarged bankrupt to date. ¹²

6 The dispute centres on a condominium unit at 8 Walshe Road, #06-01, Chelsea Gardens, Singapore 257652 (“Property”). The Property was purchased in 1997 and registered solely in Ms Lim’s name. ¹³ Ms Lim also registered another unit in the same condominium development with the address 8 Walshe Road, #10-01, Chelsea Gardens, Singapore 257652 (“Unit #10-01”), in her sole name in March 2001. ¹⁴ She later transferred legal title over Unit #10‑01 to her husband, Mr Seow Fook Sen Aloysius (“Mr Seow”), around May to July 2002. ¹⁵

7 Although the Property was registered in Ms Lim’s name, when she filed for bankruptcy in B 3859, she declared that the Property was “held on trust for [her] nephew, [Mr Pak]” in a schedule of assets appended to her supporting affidavit (“Bankruptcy 2024 Affidavit”). ¹⁶ This prompted the PTIBs to probe into the beneficial ownership of the Property. In January 2025, Ms Seah emailed Ms Lim to ask for a copy of the trust agreement for the Property. ¹⁷ Ms Lim redirected the inquiry to Mr Pak, whose solicitors from Haridass Ho & Partners (“HHP”) responded in February 2025 that there were “no written trust agreements” in respect of the Property but instead a “common intention constructive trust” or alternatively a “resulting trust” over the Property in favour of the Deceased. After the Deceased passed on, her beneficial interest in the Property vested in Mr Pak, the sole beneficiary of her estate. ¹⁸ The PTIBs’ solicitors replied to HHP in April 2025 to dispute the assertions of a trust. ¹⁹ After Mr Pak obtained the grant of letters of administration in respect of the Deceased’s estate, he brought the present action in his capacity as administrator of the estate on 5 November 2025. ²⁰

8 The option to purchase the Property (“OTP”) was issued by its developers, City Developments Ltd and Hong Leong Holdings Ltd (collectively, the “Developers”), to Ms Lim on 30 July 1997. ²¹ The sale and purchase agreement for the Property dated 16 September 1997 (“SPA”) named the Developers as the vendors and Ms Lim as the purchaser. ²²

9 The purchase price of the Property was S$3,819,270, including a booking fee of S$190,963.50. ²³ The first 20% of the purchase price was paid by cheque from a Deutsche Bank account jointly held by Mr OK Lim and Ms Lim (“DB SGD Joint Account”) in 1997. ²⁴ It is undisputed that at all material times, Mr OK Lim was the beneficial owner of the moneys in the DB SGD Joint Account. ²⁵

10 As for the balance 80% of the purchase price, a housing loan of approximately S$3,055,000 was obtained by Ms Lim from Singapore Finance Ltd in October 1997 for a 15‑year term (“SFL Loan”). ²⁶ Ms Lim received the loan offer as the registered owner of the Property, and Mr OK Lim executed a deed of personal guarantee as security for the loan. ²⁷ The SFL Loan was disbursed from June 1998 onwards and fully discharged in June 2013. ²⁸ A total of S$3,713,141 was paid in satisfaction of the SFL Loan, including interest. ²⁹ Including the booking fee and the first 20% of the purchase price, a total of S$4,476,995 was paid for the Property including interest. ³⁰

11 The certificate of statutory completion for the Property was issued in August 2001. ³¹ The Deceased and Mr Pak resided together in the Property from around 2003, until 2004 or 2005 when they moved to stay with Mr OK Lim and Mdm Tan. ³² The Property remained unoccupied until Mr Evan Lim moved in after his divorce in 2008. Mr Evan Lim stayed in the Property until around 2010 or 2011. ³³ The Property was then left vacant, save for a period of time during the COVID‑19 lockdown in 2020 when Mr Pak self‑quarantined there. ³⁴

12 Notwithstanding that Ms Lim is the sole registered owner of the Property and that Mr OK Lim financed the acquisition of the Property, Mr Pak claims that the Deceased was the sole beneficial owner of the Property. His claim is premised on an alleged oral agreement between Ms Lim, the Deceased and Mr OK Lim made sometime in 2000 for Ms Lim to hold the Property on trust for the Deceased, and for Mr OK Lim to pay for the purchase first and for the Deceased to repay him later. ³⁵ The following version of events is based heavily on the accounts of Ms Lim and Mr OK Lim, as Mr Pak and Mr Evan Lim both admitted that they were not personally involved in any of the contemporaneous discussions about a trust over the Property. ³⁶

13 According to Ms Lim, in 1997, she was looking for a residence for herself and was house shopping at Chelsea Gardens. ³⁷ She proceeded to acquire the Property for herself. ³⁸ Sometime later in 2000, when the Deceased was undergoing a divorce, she informed her parents and Ms Lim that she was looking for a place for herself and Mr Pak. Mr OK Lim indicated that he would fund the purchase of a property for the Deceased, on the expectation that the Deceased would repay him when she was financially able to. ³⁹

14 Ms Lim and the Deceased proceeded to look for a unit within Chelsea Gardens as the Deceased wanted to stay near Ms Lim. The Deceased also wanted a unit that was similar in size to the Property as she considered it to be fitting for two persons, but the sisters were informed by the Developers that only larger units were available in the same block. ⁴⁰ The sisters then worked out a plan for the Deceased to take over ownership of the Property while Ms Lim would take Unit #10‑01, which was a larger unit in Chelsea Gardens. ⁴¹ .

15 The sisters verbally asked the Developers if the Deceased could be registered as the owner of the Property, but the Developers purportedly turned them down as there was a policy against changing the buyer’s name after the OTP was signed, to prevent buyers from reselling the property for profit after signing the OTP. ⁴² Mr Pak also pleaded that another reason the Developers had declined to change the registered ownership of the Property was because they had given Ms Lim a 10% bulk purchase discount for acquiring two units in Chelsea Gardens. ⁴³ However, none of the affidavits of evidence‑in‑chief (“AEICs”) of Mr Pak’s witnesses gave evidence to support this particular assertion.

16 Given the above circumstances, the Deceased and Ms Lim discussed the matter among themselves and with their parents, and agreed that: (a) the Property would continue to be held in Ms Lim’s name but on trust for the Deceased; (b) the purchase price and mortgage for the Property would be paid by Mr OK Lim; and (c) the Deceased would repay Mr OK Lim when she was financially able to. ⁴⁴

17 Ms Lim and Mr OK Lim averred that the Deceased fully repaid Mr OK Lim in 2015 using dividend payouts from her 10% shareholding in each of two ship‑owning companies, Nan Hui Maritime (Pte Ltd) (“Nan Hui”) and Xin Hui Shipping (Pte Ltd) (“Xin Hui”). ⁴⁵

18 Nan Hui declared the following dividends in 2015 (respectively, “Nan Hui Dividends 1, 2, 3 and 4”): ⁴⁶

(a) Dividend 1/2015 of S$2.5m on 29 April 2015, of which S$250,000 was due to the Deceased;

(b) Dividend 2/2015 of S$1.6m on 16 June 2015, of which S$160,000 was due to the Deceased;

(c) Dividend 3/2015 of S$1.35m on 20 August 2015, of which S$135,000 was due to the Deceased; and

(d) Dividend 4/2015 of US$4m on 3 December 2015, of which US$400,000 was due to the Deceased, and that

Xin Hui declared the following dividends in 2015 (collectively, the “Xin Hui Dividends”): ⁴⁷

(e) Dividend 1/2015 of US$10m on 21 July 2015, of which US$1m was due to the Deceased; and

(f) Dividend 2/2015 of US$18m on 13 October 2015, of which US$1.8m was due to the Deceased.

19 Ms Lim and Mr OK Lim asserted that the Deceased repaid Mr OK Lim for the purchase of the Property using Nan Hui Dividends 1, 3 and 4, and the two Xin Hui Dividends (collectively, the “Five Dividends”). ⁴⁸

20 According to Mr OK Lim, before the Deceased received her dividend payouts, she would verbally inform him of the incoming payouts and her intention to use those moneys to repay him, and Mr OK Lim would instruct her to deposit the moneys into the DB Joint Account. ⁴⁹ The Deceased then directed that these payouts be deposited into the either the DB SGD Joint Account or another Deutsche Bank account in USD jointly held by Mr OK Lim and Ms Lim (“DB USD Joint Account”) depending on currency (collectively, the “DB Joint Accounts”). ⁵⁰ The total sums deposited were US$3.2m and S$385,000, which amounted to approximately S$4,909,480 using the 2015 average conversion rate of S$1.4139 per USD. ⁵¹ This S$4,909,480 sum was allegedly used to repay Mr OK Lim for having expended S$4,701,051.92 as at December 2015 on the purchase price, interest and bank charges for the Property, as well as property taxes and MCST charges, with the surplus to be used to continue financing the property taxes and MCST charges. ⁵²

21 Mr Pak’s primary claim is that Ms Lim and the Deceased had a common intention for the Property to be held on trust for the sole benefit of the Deceased. He claims that this common intention arose from the express agreement reached between Ms Lim, Mr OK Lim and the Deceased in 2000 or, in the alternative, can be inferred from the parties’ conduct, including the Deceased’s repayment of the purchase price to Mr OK Lim in 2015 and the actions of the Deceased and the Lims with regard to the Property. ⁵³ Mr Pak claims that the Deceased had relied on this common intention to her detriment by taking possession of the Property as her home, committing financial resources to the Property, and not acquiring any other property in her own name. ⁵⁴ In the event that a common intention constructive trust is not found, Mr Pak claims that a resulting trust arises because the Deceased had provided the entirety of the purchase moneys used to acquire the Property by repaying Mr OK Lim using the Five Dividends. ⁵⁵ In the further alternative, he seeks a declaration that Ms Lim has been unjustly enriched at the expense of the Deceased by the former’s retention of the legal and beneficial interest in the Property notwithstanding that the Deceased had paid for its purchase, renovation and upkeep. ⁵⁶

22 The PTIBs dispute this version of events, which they contend is self-serving and inconsistent with the positions Ms Lim had taken in other proceedings. The PTIBs argue that there is no credible evidence of the alleged common intention for Ms Lim to hold the Property on trust for the Deceased, nor do they accept the Deceased’s supposed repayment of the purchase price to Mr OK Lim. ⁵⁷ The PTIBs also challenge the legal viability of Mr Pak’s resulting trust claim as the Deceased’s purported repayments to Mr OK Lim were made pursuant to an agreement that was made years after the purchase of the Property. Thus, on Mr Pak’s own case, there was no agreement between parties at the time of acquisition. ⁵⁸ Further, since there is no evidence of the Deceased’s repayment of the purchase price of the Property, there is no enrichment to ground an unjust enrichment claim. ⁵⁹ There is also no unjust factor to speak of. ⁶⁰

23 The following issues arise for my determination:

(a) Did Ms Lim, Mr OK Lim and the Deceased have a common intention for the Property to be held on trust for the sole benefit of the Deceased?

(b) If the answer to (a) is no, did a resulting trust arise over the Property in favour of the Deceased?

(c) If the answer to both (a) and (b) is no, was Ms Lim unjustly enriched at the Deceased’s expense?

24 Ordinarily, where claims of both a common intention constructive trust and a presumed resulting trust are made, the six-step analytical framework set out by the Court of Appeal in [160] of Chan Yuen Lan v See Fong Mun [2014] 3 SLR 1048 (“Chan Yuen Lan”) applies. The starting point of that analysis is to determine whether there is sufficient evidence of the parties’ respective financial contributions to the purchase price giving rise to a presumption of resulting trust, followed by an examination of whether there is sufficient evidence of a common intention to hold the beneficial interest in proportions which are different from that of their respective contributions to the purchase price: Chan Yuen Lan at [160(a)]–[160(b)]. Nonetheless, the courts in later decisions have noted that the analysis need not always proceed in this strict sequence, as the foremost claim in practice is usually a common intention constructive trust, with a resulting trust being the backstop claim: Er Kok Yong v Tan Cheng Cheng [2023] SGHC 58 (“Er Kok Yong”) at [22], citing Ng So Hang v Wong Sang Woo [2018] SGHC 162 at [24].

25 That was the case in these proceedings as well. As Mr Pak has advanced a common intention constructive trust as his primary claim, I deal with this issue first before turning to consider his resulting trust and unjust enrichment claims.

26 A common intention constructive trust arises when it is “clear that there is a common intention among the parties as to how their beneficial interests are to be held” (Su Emmanuel v Emmanuel Priya Ethel Anne [2016] 3 SLR 1222 (“Su Emmanuel”) at [83]), and there is detrimental reliance on that common intention (Ong Chai Soon v Ong Chai Koon [2022] 2 SLR 457 (“Ong Chai Soon”) at [39]). There are broadly three scenarios in which a common intention may arise: (a) from an express discussion between parties; (b) from an inference based on direct financial contributions made to the purchase price of the property; or (c) in exceptional situations, from other conduct which gives rise to an implied common intention: Jenny Prawesti v Sauw Tjiauw Koe [2025] SGHC 209 (“Jenny Prawesti”) at [26], citing Chan Yuen Lan at [97] and Ong Chai Soon at [34]–[35].

27 Whether a common intention is said to be express or implied, there must be sufficient and compelling evidence of such intention: Su Emmanuel at [83]. Particularly in a case like the present, where a trust is claimed in respect of property registered in the name of a bankrupt, the evidence must be assessed with especial caution, as the effect of allowing such a claim would be to exclude the property from the pool for distribution to the bankrupt’s creditors. In this respect, I echo the observations of Mohamed Faizal JC (as he then was) in Lim Yan Yi Michelle v Leow Quek Shiong [2025] SGHC 118 (“Michelle Lim”), which was another case involving claims of a trust over property held by one of the Lims (in that case, three insurance policies held by Mr Evan Lim), at [1]:

28 Mr Pak’s claim was not that a trust arose over the Property at the point of purchase in 1997, but that a subsequent common intention constructive trust arose in or around 2000 when Ms Lim, Mr OK Lim and the Deceased agreed that Ms Lim would take Unit #10-01, the Deceased would take the beneficial ownership of the Property, and Mr OK Lim would fund the purchase of the Property with the Deceased paying him back when she was financially able to.

29 I accept that unlike a resulting trust, a common intention constructive trust need not crystallise at the point of acquisition and can arise pursuant to a subsequent common intention to vary the parties’ beneficial interests: Jenny Prawesti at [80], citing Chan Yuen Lan at [160(f)] and Su Emmanuel at [83]. However, I reject Mr Pak’s claim of a common intention constructive trust as I find that there is insufficient evidence to support the existence of any agreement for Ms Lim to hold the Property on trust for the Deceased.

30 As a start, Mr Pak conceded that he had no personal knowledge of “the legal, financial or transactional arrangements surrounding the purchase of the [P]roperty”. ⁶¹ His case on the purported express agreement made between his late mother, his aunt and his grandfather in 2000 rested almost entirely on Ms Lim and Mr OK Lim’s account of events.

31 However, the evidence of Mr OK Lim and Ms Lim on the alleged agreement consisted of bare and unverifiable assertions that were unsupported by any contemporaneous records. Neither was able to produce any incidental documentation or other evidence in writing, such as a WhatsApp message or email, that recorded the alleged agreement for Ms Lim to hold the Property on trust for the Deceased. Even if it is common for familial trust arrangements to remain undocumented by formal trust deeds (a point which I note may not be entirely accurate as far as the Lim family was concerned: see [130] below), it is difficult to believe that, if a trust arrangement existed, not a single message passed between any of the Lims during the preceding two decades which at least went some way towards corroborating their allegation that the family always regarded the Property as belonging to the Deceased.

32 To the extent that Ms Lim suggested that the Property had to be registered in her name initially because of discussions with the Developers, no evidence of these purported discussions, or of any contemporaneous correspondence with the Developers, was placed before me. ⁶²

33 On the contrary, the available documentary evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Ms Lim held both the legal and beneficial interest in the Property. Ms Lim was the one who signed the SPA, the Property was registered in her name, the mortgage was taken out solely in her name, and the mortgage payments were made from the DB SGD Joint Account of which she was a joint account-holder. Even if I accept that most of these acts took place in 1997, before the alleged common intention came about in 2000, nothing changed after that. The mortgage payments continued to be made from the DB SGD Joint Account, the statements of account for the Property were still sent only to Ms Lim, and Ms Lim continued to arrange for payment of the MCST fees and property tax for the Property (at least until 2024).

34 To make matters worse, I agree with the PTIBs that Ms Lim’s assertion of the purported trust over the Property is hopelessly inconsistent with the positions she had taken in other proceedings (the relevant records from these other proceedings were adduced as evidence in the present action, by both Ms Lim and the PTIBs). ⁶³

35 After the Deceased passed away in June 2017, Ms Lim and Mdm Tan, as the joint administrators of the Deceased’s estate, filed a schedule of assets in P 294 on 19 October 2018 (“Probate 2018 Affidavit”). Notably, this schedule of assets did not include the Property, ⁶⁴ even though the Lims claim that it was beneficially owned by the Deceased since 2000.

36 Almost three years later, after the Mareva injunction was made against her (see [4] above), Ms Lim filed her 11th affidavit in S 805 dated 17 June 2021 exhibiting a schedule of all her assets (“Mareva 2021 11th Affidavit”). This schedule listed the Property as being “[h]eld solely by [Ms Lim]” with no indication of any trust. ⁶⁵ This was followed by Ms Lim’s 12th affidavit in S 805 dated 25 June 2021, which similarly exhibited a schedule of assets describing the Property as “[h]eld solely by [Ms Lim]”. ⁶⁶ I refer to these two affidavits collectively as the “Mareva 2021 Affidavits”.

37 Ms Lim only did a volte-face and formally disclaimed beneficial ownership of the Property on 16 September 2024 in her 24th affidavit in S 805 (“Mareva 2024 Affidavit”). ⁶⁷ This affidavit was filed more than three years after her earlier affidavits in S 805 and shortly before the consent judgments were entered and Ms Lim filed for bankruptcy.

38 Ms Lim explained in her Mareva 2024 Affidavit that she had “inadvertently” included the Property in the Mareva 2021 Affidavits and was now changing her position as she had since been “reminded” by Mr Pak that the Deceased was the beneficial owner of the Property. ⁶⁸ Ms Lim also referred to a letter of demand dated 30 July 2024 issued by HHP on Mr Pak’s behalf against her, taking the position that she held the Property on trust for the Deceased and should have conveyed it to Mr Pak when he turned 21 years old in 2018 (“LOD”). ⁶⁹

39 Four days later, in P 294, Ms Lim filed a joint affidavit with Mdm Tan dated 20 September 2024 (“Probate 2024 Affidavit”) to amend the schedule of assets of the Deceased’s estate to include the Property. ⁷⁰ This joint affidavit explained that the previous omission of the Property from the Probate 2018 Affidavit was “inadvertent” as Ms Lim and Mdm Tan “mistakenly thought, at the time, that, since the [Property] was in [Ms Lim]’s name on trust for [Mr Pak], it need not be included in the Schedule of Assets and could be transferred to [Mr Pak] at any time after he turns 21 years old”. ⁷¹

40 Less than a month later, in B 3859 which was Ms Lim’s bankruptcy application, she declared in the Bankruptcy 2024 Affidavit that the Property was held on trust for Mr Pak (see [7] above). ⁷²

41 I agree with the PTIBs that Ms Lim’s explanations for her change in position in 2024 were self-serving and internally inconsistent. First, the Mareva 2024 and Probate 2024 Affidavits simply cannot be reconciled with each other. The former suggested that Ms Lim had forgotten that the Deceased was the beneficial owner of the Property and therefore had to be “reminded” by Mr Pak, whereas the latter took the position that Ms Lim always knew that the Deceased was the beneficial owner but erroneously assumed that it need not be listed as an asset for the Deceased’s estate. These are conflicting accounts which go directly toward Ms Lim’s knowledge of the Deceased’s beneficial ownership over the Property. Indeed, it is striking that Ms Lim could not even provide a consistent account across two affidavits filed four days apart. When confronted with this inconsistency at trial, she could only make a feeble attempt to distinguish the Mareva and probate matters as “separate thing[s]”. ⁷³ In my assessment, Ms Lim’s inability to offer a coherent explanation for her previous declarations is telling, as it underscores how disingenuous her change in position was.

42 Second, the explanations in the Mareva 2024 and Probate 2024 Affidavits are inconsistent with other evidence provided by Ms Lim in these proceedings. In so far as the Mareva 2024 Affidavit suggested that Ms Lim had forgotten that the Property was held on trust for the Deceased until 2024, this is inconsistent with her own AEIC, which states that she had made payment for MCST charges for the Property from April to June 2021 “on behalf of [Mr Pak]”. ⁷⁴ This must have been premised on her recognition, and thus awareness, of his alleged beneficial ownership in 2021, which was the same time she filed her Mareva 2021 Affidavits declaring the Property as her own.

43 Moreover, Ms Lim belatedly suggested on the stand that the Property was excluded from the Probate 2018 Affidavit and the Mareva 2021 Affidavits pursuant to legal advice. For the Probate 2018 Affidavit, she explained that she and Mdm Tan had not included the Property in the schedule of the Deceased’s assets because they had been told by their lawyer that it did not need to be included as it was not in the Deceased’s name. ⁷⁵ This was another subtle shift in her evidence, in so far as Ms Lim now appeared to be suggesting that their previous erroneous assumption was made pursuant to legal advice. Putting aside the implausibility of any lawyer suggesting that assets beneficially held by the Deceased did not need to be listed as assets of the Deceased’s estate, Ms Lim never alluded to any such advice in her AEIC for the present action, nor was any evidence of this advice ever tendered.

44 As for the Mareva 2021 Affidavits, Ms Lim asserted that she had in fact raised the existence of the trust over the Property with a Senior Counsel (whom she claimed to have consulted regarding S 805), but he advised her that she needed to have a trust document. As she did not have one, she “just kept quiet” and proceeded to declare the Property as belonging solely to her in her Mareva 2021 Affidavits. ⁷⁶ This new account suggests even more strongly that the contents of her Mareva 2024 Affidavit were false as, on her own case, her omission of the trust in 2021 was not “inadvertent” but a deliberate decision made after receiving legal advice.

45 On this note, I observe that Ms Lim had a tendency to fall back on purported legal advice to explain her previous inconsistent positions. Yet conspicuously, no evidence of any such legal advice was ever produced, nor were the lawyers she named ever approached or called as witnesses to corroborate her claims.

46 Third, Ms Lim’s contemporaneous conduct at the time of the Mareva 2021 Affidavits and the Probate 2018 Affidavit did not indicate that she had considered the Property as being held on trust for the Deceased. As the PTIBs’ counsel pointed out, Ms Lim had declared other assets as being held on trust in the Mareva 2021 11th Affidavit, such as her 10% shareholding in An Ping Shipping Pte Ltd and her 100% shareholding in Daichi Shipmanagement Pte Ltd. ⁷⁷ I agree that this further undermines Ms Lim’s claim that there was a common intention for the Property to be held on trust for the Deceased, since she noticeably did not declare the purported trust even as she declared the existence of other trusts at the same time. While this omission could perhaps have been explained on the basis that the shares were assets held by others on trust for Ms Lim (unlike the Property which Ms Lim claimed to hold on trust for the Deceased), this explanation rings hollow as Ms Lim had in 2021 also disclosed other assets that she held on trust for Mr Pak, namely, AIA insurance policies which were transferred from the Deceased to her after the Deceased passed away. ⁷⁸ That she did not disclose the same for the Property is highly suggestive that the common intention constructive trust being claimed now is a mere afterthought.

47 As for the Probate 2024 Affidavit, while Ms Lim explained that the Property was excluded as it could simply be transferred to Mr Pak any time after he turned 21 years old, this does not advance her case much further because it does not explain why no such transfer was effected when Mr Pak came of age on 1 August 2018, or any time after that until the present action. I elaborate more on this from [124] onwards, where I consider the other indicia of a common intention constructive trust that Mr Pak relied on.

48 I pause at this juncture to emphasise that a witness giving evidence on affidavit must do so with utmost solemnity and integrity. An affidavit is a signed statement of facts made under oath, where the deponent attests to the truth of the statements made therein, or at least what the deponent believes to be true. The same goes for oral testimony. When a party deposes to a certain version of events in one set of proceedings, she should expect to be held to that sworn position: Teo Han Siang v Lim Eng Keong [2026] SGHCR 12 at [42]. If, in a subsequent proceeding, she seeks to retract her earlier sworn statement and advance a fundamentally different version of events, but provides no cogent explanation for this change of position, this will not bode well for the court’s assessment of her credibility.

49 Finally, the various inconsistencies in Ms Lim’s evidence above must be viewed in light of the timing of the Mareva 2024 and Probate 2024 Affidavits. It is suspect that the trust was only asserted and the amendments made shortly before the Lims were ordered to pay substantial damages to multiple claimants in other suits: see [4] above. As these orders were handed down by way of consent judgments, there must have been discussions on the terms of the consent judgments in the months leading up to September 2024. In other words, Ms Lim must have been aware that her bankruptcy was imminent as she would soon be made liable for damages in the billions. Seen in this context, it strains credulity to believe that Ms Lim only coincidentally realised that she did not own the beneficial interest in the Property during this period.

50 Another key plank of Mr Pak’s case was that the Deceased had repaid Mr OK Lim for the Property by transferring the Five Dividends into the DB Joint Account.

51 It is common ground that the S$4,476,995 that was paid for the purchase of the Property came from the DB SGD Joint Account and the SFL Loan, all of which were financed by Mr OK Lim. The issue is whether, as Mr Pak claims, the Deceased repaid this sum to Mr OK Lim pursuant to their earlier agreement in 2000, such that an inference of a common intention can be drawn based on the Deceased’s financial contributions to the purchase price.

52 While Mr Pak’s case was that the Five Dividends represented the Deceased’s repayments to Mr OK Lim, I do not find this to be borne out by the evidence.

53 In the first place, Ms Lim conceded that there was no contemporaneous record of how much was paid from the DB SGD Joint Account towards the Property. ⁷⁹ Without taking any steps to keep track of how much was even owed by the Deceased, coupled with Ms Lim’s admission that she never told the Deceased exactly how much to repay, ⁸⁰ it is difficult to see how this court should accept that there was any prior agreement to repay Mr OK Lim at all, let alone make a finding that the Five Dividends represented the Deceased’s repayments of the sum owed to Mr OK Lim.

54 There are also discrepancies in Mr Pak’s case on the repayments, which again relied entirely on the unverifiable accounts of Ms Lim and Mr OK Lim.

55 First, the Five Dividends add up to about S$4,909,480, which is S$432,485 in excess of the S$4,476,995 paid from the DB Joint Accounts towards the Property: see [10] above. ⁸¹ Ms Lim explained that the surplus was used to repay Mr OK Lim for the property taxes from 2000 to 2010 and 2014 to 2015 and the MCST charges from 2001 to 2015 ⁸² which cost a total of S$225,057, with the remaining surplus used to continue financing the MCST charges and property taxes for the Property from 2016 to 2020, which added up to another S$87,072. ⁸³

56 However, even after accounting for the property taxes and MCST charges, the numbers still do not tally as the sum of the Five Dividends is still S$120,356 in excess of all the expenses flowing from the purchase of the Property. There is no mention in Ms Lim’s AEIC of using the further surplus to continue financing the MCST charges and property taxes after 2020.

57 Mr Pak also failed to explain why the court should ignore Nan Hui Dividend 2 as well as the other transfers into the DB Joint Account which took place in 2015.

58 In his statement of claim, Mr Pak pleaded that the Five Dividends (excluding Nan Hui Dividend 2) were transferred to the DB Joint Account as repayment for the Property. ⁸⁴ In her AEIC, Ms Lim only produced records of Nan Hui Dividends 1, 3 and 4, ⁸⁵ even though Nan Hui Dividend 2 was also declared in 2015. ⁸⁶ In her supplementary AEIC, Ms Lim explained that she had omitted Nan Hui Dividend 2 because she did not have the records of the S$160,000 payment. Ms Lim then stated that the S$160,000 from Nan Hui Dividend 2 also formed part of the Deceased’s repayment to Mr OK Lim for the purchase of the Property. ⁸⁷ Mr Pak confirmed in oral closing submissions that his revised case was that all six dividends (ie, the Five Dividends plus Nan Hui Dividend 2) represented the Deceased’s repayments for the Property. ⁸⁸ However, this only adds to the unexplained surplus above. If Nan Hui Dividend 2 is included, the surplus would increase to S$280,356. Mr Pak gave no real explanation for the discrepancy in oral closing submissions, save to argue that there was no need to be exact in the figures for intra-familial loans, unlike commercial loans. ⁸⁹ Even if I am prepared to accept this rather convenient explanation, the variance came up to almost S$300,000. Bearing in mind that Mr Pak bears the burden of proving his pleaded case that the dividends were used by the Deceased to repay Mr OK Lim for the Property, I find it difficult to accept that they could be said to represent sufficient and compelling evidence of the alleged common intention, when the figures are so far apart.

59 Mr Pak’s case is further undermined by his failure to account for the other transfers into the DB SGD Joint Account in 2015 (apart from the payouts from the Five Dividends) which were redacted in the records produced by Ms Lim. ⁹⁰ Mr Pak’s only response was to attribute the redactions to Ms Lim, as he claimed to have extracted the records from Ms Lim’s affidavits in P 294 and S 805. ⁹¹ Without a complete picture of the movements into the DB SGD Joint Account during the same period, it is difficult to see why the court should accept Mr Pak’s contention that the identified dividends represented the Deceased’s repayment of the sums expended by Mr OK Lim on the Property.

60 The PTIBs also pointed out that there were unexplained cheque payments totalling S$1.791m from the DB SGD Joint Account to the Deceased in May 2015. ⁹² Ms Lim sought to characterise this S$1.791m and another S$450,000 that was withdrawn from the DB SGD Joint Account (totalling S$2.241m) as moneys that Mr OK Lim gave to the Deceased to enable her to pay a civil penalty to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (“MAS”). ⁹³ The MAS had imposed a penalty of S$2.241m on the Deceased sometime in April 2015 for insider trading as the Deceased had purchased 892,000 shares in Singapore Petroleum Company (“SPC”) in 2009 whilst in possession of price‑sensitive and non‑public information. ⁹⁴

61 However, this explanation introduced further difficulties into Mr Pak’s own case. When Mr OK Lim was cross-examined on this point, he testified that he did not give the Deceased the sensitive information or the money to purchase the SPC shares, but he gave her money to pay the fine as otherwise, “how will she manage to pay…?” ⁹⁵ But this leaves entirely unexplained how the Deceased was even financially able to purchase the 892,000 SPC shares in 2009, which would have cost her at least S$4.2m. ⁹⁶ Moreover, the alleged oral agreement was for the Deceased to repay Mr OK Lim when she was in a position to do so. If the Deceased had access to S$4.2m in 2009, it begs the question of why she waited until 2015 to begin repaying Mr OK Lim when she would clearly have been in a financial position to do so much earlier.

62 On this note, I also observe that Ms Lim contradicted her father’s evidence and suggested under cross‑examination that Mr OK Lim had given the Deceased the money to purchase the SPC shares in 2009. ⁹⁷ There is, to my mind, no need for me to determine whether Mr OK Lim financed the Deceased’s purchase of the SPC shares. Either way, I accept that it was not improbable that Mr OK Lim gave his daughter S$2.241m to pay the civil penalty. The timing and quantum of the withdrawals from the DB SGD Joint Account are consistent with the civil penalty imposed by the MAS. Nonetheless, the differing accounts of Mr OK Lim and Ms Lim on crucial details surrounding the insider trading case further undermined the credibility of Mr Pak’s most material witnesses.

63 I would add that I have serious doubts that the Deceased was even the beneficial owner of the Nan Hui and Xin Hui shares from which the dividends were derived. It is not disputed that the Deceased was the registered holder of these shares and that the dividend payment vouchers were addressed to her, ⁹⁸ but these are not determinative of the Deceased’s beneficial ownership of the shares and the associated dividend income. In fact, I note that the dividend payouts were made directly to the DB Joint Account held by Mr OK Lim and Ms Lim, and never touched the Deceased’s personal account. ⁹⁹ While the dividend payment vouchers stated “Pay to: Lim Huey Yih [ie, the Deceased]”, each voucher recorded a specific DB cheque number for payment and these numbers matched the cheques that were credited into the DB Joint Account. ¹⁰⁰

64 Both Mr OK Lim and Ms Lim asserted that these deposits were made pursuant to the Deceased’s instructions for her dividend payouts to be transferred to Mr OK Lim as reimbursement for the purchase of the Property. However, there is no documentary record or other evidence in writing (such as an annotation to the payment vouchers) to corroborate this. ¹⁰¹ Ms Lim insisted that the Deceased had given verbal instructions to the staff processing the payments to deposit the cheques into the DB Joint Account “to repay my father”, ¹⁰² yet none of these staff members were called as witnesses to corroborate this account. Considering matters in the round, I am unable to accept Ms Lim’s bare and self-serving assertion that the Deceased had instructed the payment administration staff to deposit the dividend payouts into the joint account to repay her father.

65 The PTIBs suggest that the more logical explanation for this flow of funds is that the true beneficial owner of the Deceased’s Nan Hui and Xin Hui shares was Mr OK Lim himself. ¹⁰³ To make good this argument, counsel pointed to the transfer of the Deceased’s Nan Hui and Xin Hui shares to Ms Lim and Mr Evan Lim respectively on 23 June 2017. ¹⁰⁴ I agree with the PTIBs that two aspects of the transfers are particularly questionable.

66 First, the transfers took place six days before the Deceased’s death, when she was gravely ill and hospitalised in the Intensive Care Unit (“ICU”). ¹⁰⁵ The transfers must have been effected by a share transfer form signed by both transferor and transferee, but Ms Lim testified that she did not get the Deceased to sign such a form in the ICU and Mr Evan Lim did not even recall that the transfers took place at the time. ¹⁰⁶ Further, both Ms Lim and Mr Evan Lim testified that the transfer forms could have been pre‑signed by the Deceased. ¹⁰⁷

67 It transpired during trial that there was a practice within Hin Leong of having shareholders pre‑sign transfer forms, leaving the transferee’s name blank and filling it in later under Mr OK Lim’s instructions. This can be seen from Ms Lim’s schedule of assets in her Mareva 2021 11th Affidavit, where she declared several shareholdings which third parties held on trust for her, and appended trust declarations which had been pre‑signed by these third parties with the name of the beneficial owner left blank, eg, Ms Lim stated that the 10% shareholding in An Ping Shipping Pte Ltd in Ms Seng Hui Choo’s name was held on trust for her, and the declaration of trust stated “[t]he purchase price for the said 5,000 shares was fully paid by [blank] (hereinafter called ‘The Beneficial Owner’)”. ¹⁰⁸ The same can be observed in Mr Evan Lim’s schedule of assets in his 11th affidavit for S 805, where he had also declared certain shareholdings which third parties held on trust for him and appended pre‑signed trust declarations, eg, Mr Evan Lim stated that the 10% shareholding in An Ding Shipping Pte Ltd in Ms Koh Guek Lan’s name was held on trust for him. The trust declaration contained the signature “Koh Guek Lan” but the field for the beneficiary’s name was blank. ¹⁰⁹

68 When these pre‑signed trust declarations were brought to their attention, both Ms Lim and Mr Evan Lim accepted that it was their father, Mr OK Lim, who would decide who the beneficial owner of the shares should be. This is clear from Ms Lim’s cross‑examination: ¹¹⁰

69 Mr Evan Lim admitted as much in his cross‑examination: ¹¹¹

70 In light of the above evidence, Mr OK Lim’s assertion that the Deceased “ha[d] the authority” to transfer her shares and that he was personally unaware of the transfer of the Deceased’s shares in 2017 ¹¹² cannot be believed.

71  Given this admitted practice in Hin Leong, coupled with the Deceased’s poor health at the time of the transfer of her Nan Hui and Xin Hui shares, I find it extremely unlikely the transfer of the Deceased’s shares in 2017 could have taken place on her directions. The only logical explanation which coheres with the evidence is that these transfers were undertaken entirely at Mr OK Lim’s behest and on his directions, because all the parties involved treated the shares as being beneficially owned and controlled by Mr OK Lim. This is clear from Ms Lim’s cross-examination: ¹¹³

72 As Ms Lim conceded, since Mr OK Lim had the power to solely decide whose names the various shares should be held in, it follows that it was also Mr OK Lim who would solely decide who the accompanying dividends should be credited to. The upshot of this is that the dividends earned on the Nan Hui and Xin Hui shares would not even have belonged to the Deceased to begin with, such that her transfer of the dividends to Mr OK Lim could be credited as her repayment of the purchase moneys. Put simply, the dividends were likely directly credited to Mr OK Lim as he was the beneficial owner of the shares.

73 This is reinforced by the second questionable aspect of the transfers of the Deceased’s shares in 2017, which is the amounts purportedly paid for the transfers. Based on the Nan Hui and Xin Hui registers of members in the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority’s records, the Deceased’s shares were transferred at par value. Her 50,000 Nan Hui shares were transferred to Ms Lim for S$50,000, and her 5,000 Xin Hui shares were transferred to Mr Evan Lim for S$5,000. ¹¹⁴ This is notwithstanding that the dividends declared by Nan Hui and Xin Hui on those same shares in just a single year were in the millions: see [18] above.

74 While I accept Mr Pak’s point that consideration need only be sufficient but not adequate as a matter of law ¹¹⁵ (Gay Choon Ing v Loh Sze Ti Terence Peter [2009] 2 SLR(R) 332 at [97]), the issue is not whether there was valid consideration for the share transfers. Instead, the amount of consideration is relevant to assessing whether these were in fact genuine transfers of shares beneficially owned by the Deceased, or whether the transfers were part of the Lims’ practice of shuffling shares beneficially owned by Mr OK Lim around, under the patriarch’s directions.

75 In cross‑examination, Ms Lim said that she did not pay the Deceased the S$50,000 for the Nan Hui shares ¹¹⁶ as she had “left all this to [the] corporate manager … who would be acting on the instructions and approval of [her] father”. ¹¹⁷ When probed on whether the S$50,000 consideration for the transfer of the Nan Hui shares to her was an undervalue, she eventually conceded that it was: ¹¹⁸

76 Ms Lim’s first few evasive responses, redirecting counsel’s questions to her father and corporate manager, already substantiate the contention that Mr OK Lim was the controlling mind behind the transfer. Her evidence that she did not pay the S$50,000 and that she did not know if the Deceased even received S$50,000 for the transfer lends further force to the PTIBs’ submission that the transfers were a mere “paper exercise”. ¹¹⁹

77 For good order, HHP had in their closing submissions objected to PTIBs’ arguments that the Nan Hui and Xin Hui shares beneficially belonged to Mr OK Lim instead of the Deceased, on the basis that these factual assertions were not pleaded. HHP also took issue with the disclosure of the relevant documents to Mr Pak only four days before trial commenced, on 24 July 2026. ¹²⁰ As a result, HHP argued that Mr Pak did not have fair notice of the new allegations and had no opportunity to investigate the execution of the transfer forms or call further witnesses. ¹²¹

78 I agree with the PTIBs that these objections are without merit as the issue of the Deceased’s beneficial ownership of the Nan Hui and Xin Hui shares flows directly from Mr Pak’s own pleaded case that the Deceased used the dividends from those shares to repay Mr OK Lim. ¹²² Logically, this contention can only hold true if the shares were beneficially owned by the Deceased such that she also beneficially owned the associated dividend income, and Mr Pak accepted as much in his oral closing submissions. ¹²³

79 In their defence, the PTIBs explicitly pleaded that save for the fact that the relevant dividends were declared by Nan Hui and Xin Hui to the Deceased, the rest of Mr Pak’s contentions were not admitted and Mr Pak was put to strict proof thereof. ¹²⁴ Having made clear that they did not accept Mr Pak’s suggestion that the dividends represented repayments from the Deceased to Mr OK Lim, it was, in my assessment, not incumbent on the PTIBs to specifically plead the reasons why they did not admit that the dividends were repayments. The pleadings were sufficient to place the matter squarely in issue. Mr Pak could not seriously contend that he was taken by surprise in having to prove his own case, and the PTIBs were plainly entitled to test his evidence.

80 Further, I would add that even if this specific contention had to be pleaded, it is open to the court to consider an unpleaded point where there is no irreparable prejudice caused to the other party in the trial that cannot be compensated by costs, or where it would be clearly unjust for the court not to do so: How Weng Fan v Sengkang Town Council [2023] 2 SLR 235 at [20]. In this case, I did not see any material prejudice caused to Mr Pak that could not be compensated by costs. The questions surrounding the Deceased’s purported beneficial ownership of the Nan Hui and Xin Hui shares were expressly put to the Lims at trial, and Mr Pak conceded that they were the most material witnesses who would have knowledge of the issue. ¹²⁵ During the trial, HHP also did not raise any objections to the PTIBs’ line of questioning, whether as a point of pleading or to dispute the documents that it now sought to impugn.

81 Ms Lim was asked at trial why she did not amend her affidavits in S 805 and P 294 earlier, if there was in fact a common intention constructive trust from as early as 2000 as she claimed. ¹²⁶ Her responses opened a new can of worms.

82 Ms Lim repeatedly asserted during cross-examination that she had communicated with her lawyers in 2022 or 2023 to inform them of the trust and to amend her affidavits but they did not act on her instructions until 2024. ¹²⁷ This prompted the PTIBs’ instructed counsel, Mr Thio Shen Yi SC (“Mr Thio”), to refer Ms Lim to the emails that she had sent to her then-solicitors, Advocatus Law LLP (“Advocatus”), in 2022.

83 These emails were disclosed by HHP to Mr Thio’s team via email on the evening before the first day of trial. After Mr Thio had seen the emails and pointed out that he was taking this disclosure to mean that Ms Lim was waiving any privilege over her communications with Advocatus, HHP then sought to retract the disclosure. ¹²⁸

84 When Mr Thio referred Ms Lim to the Advocatus emails, HHP objected on the grounds of privilege although they conceded that HHP did not act for Ms Lim and thus could not claim privilege on her behalf. ¹²⁹ Ms Lim then took the cue to assert privilege over the same emails on the stand.

85 I overruled the objection at trial as I found that Ms Lim had impliedly waived privilege over the emails. Although HHP purportedly sought to retract the disclosure of the emails, Ms Lim continued to refer repeatedly to her emails to Advocatus in 2022 on the stand in an attempt to justify her conduct. ¹³⁰ Where “a party voluntarily puts privileged material before the court”, then as a matter of fairness, “he cannot rely on the advantageous aspects of it to advance his case but claim privilege in respect of the other less advantageous aspects of the [document]”: ARX v Comptroller of Income Tax [2016] 5 SLR 590 (“ARX”) at [65]; see also Tentat Singapore Pte Ltd v Multiple Granite Pte Ltd [2009] 1 SLR(R) 42 at [24], cited in Leong Quee Ching Karen v Lim Soon Huat [2024] 3 SLR 1049 at [49]. While I accept that Ms Lim did not explicitly refer to the specific emails, her repeated assertions on the stand that she had informed her lawyers about the trust in 2022 or 2023 were undisputably references to these very emails. The unfairness that justifies a finding of implied waiver arises from the inconsistency of the privilege‑holder’s act with his subsequent maintenance of privilege: ARX at [67].

86 Moreover, HHP had intentionally and voluntarily disclosed the emails to Mr Thio’s team. ¹³¹ When one discloses documents to an opposing party, one accepts that the documents will lose their confidentiality vis-à-vis that opposing party and that privilege over those documents can no longer be maintained (save where the disclosure was provided only for a limited purpose, was by mistake or stealth or was otherwise unintentional, and the document has not been admitted into evidence): see Colin Liew, Legal Professional Privilege (Academy Publishing, 2nd Ed, 2023) at paras 8.22–8.23, citing Ser Kim Koi v Fulton William Merrell [2008] 2 SLR(R) 1063 at [10], Suppipat v Siam Commercial Bank Public Company Ltd [2022] EWHC 381 (Comm) and Shepherd v Fox Williams LLP [2014] EWHC 1224 (QB). There was no suggestion that HHP’s disclosure was for such a limited purpose. On the contrary, HHP (and Ms Lim) plainly intended to rely on the contents of the emails until Mr Thio suggested that the implications of that reliance could be wider than what they had initially anticipated.

87 For completeness, Mr Thio had also suggested during trial that Ms Lim could not assert privilege over the emails as against the PTIBs, who were the trustees in bankruptcy of her estate, because: (a) any privilege she can assert arguably “belongs to” the PTIBs, who stand in her shoes; ¹³² and (b) s 370 of the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018 (2020 Rev Ed) (“IRDA”) allows the PTIBs to seize any privileged document which may be relevant to the administration of the bankruptcy estate. ¹³³

88 I first set out the material parts of s 370 of the IRDA:

89 It is clear that s 370 of the IRDA confers upon trustees in bankruptcy the power to obtain privileged information relating to the bankrupt’s estate or affairs. Each of the provisions above contains a clause expressly authorising the Official Assignee to seize records “including any which would be privileged from disclosure during any proceedings”. These powers extend to trustees in bankruptcy appointed in place of the Official Assignee, as s 39(2) of the IRDA provides that “[u]nless the context otherwise requires, any reference in this Act to the Official Assignee includes a reference to a trustee in bankruptcy”.

90 Section 370 gives effect to s 369(1) of the IRDA – which requires the Official Assignee to “take possession of the deeds, books and documents which relate to the bankrupt’s estate or affairs”, along with “all other parts of the bankrupt’s property capable of manual delivery” – by empowering the Official Assignee to “take an inventory of and seize any property comprised in the bankrupt’s estate”: Chan Kwong Shing Adrian v Invidia Capital Pte Ltd [2024] 4 SLR 1124 (“Chan Kwong Shing Adrian”) at [16]. These powers are necessary in order for the Official Assignee or a trustee in bankruptcy to perform their statutory function of getting in, realising and distributing the bankruptcy estate.

91 As s 370 of the IRDA expressly gives the PTIBs the power to obtain privileged information relating to the estate or affairs of the bankrupt, and the emails in question were clearly “books, papers or records” relating to Ms Lim’s bankruptcy estate as they shed light on the specific assets which formed part of her bankruptcy estate, I agree with the PTIBs that Ms Lim is not in a position to assert privilege to avoid disclosure of the emails to them. However, what is less clear is whether it is open to the PTIBs to use this information in court proceedings which would arguably amount to waiving the bankrupt’s privilege to the world at large.

92 On this note, it is helpful to consider the case of Shlosberg v Avonwick Holdings Ltd [2017] Ch 210 (“Shlosberg”). In that case, a bankrupt applied for an injunction requiring a firm of solicitors (which concurrently acted for both his joint trustees in bankruptcy and his principal creditor) to cease acting for the creditor, as the creditor had sought to bring a claim in conspiracy against the bankrupt and other parties using privileged information obtained by his trustees in bankruptcy pursuant to their powers under s 311(1) of the Insolvency Act 1986 (c 45) (UK) (“UK Insolvency Act”). The injunction was granted at first instance by Arnold J, sitting in the English High Court. Arnold J’s decision was upheld on appeal by Sir Terence Etherton MR, sitting in the English Court of Appeal.

93 The English Court of Appeal held that on a proper interpretation of the UK Insolvency Act, privilege did not form part of the “property” of a bankrupt which automatically vests in the trustee in bankruptcy. The court reached this conclusion even though the UK Insolvency Act included a provision similar to s 370 of the IRDA in s 311(1), which gave the trustee the power to take possession of “all books, papers and other records which relate to the bankrupt’s estate or affairs … including any which would be privileged from disclosure in any proceedings” [emphasis added]. The English Court of Appeal reasoned that the provisions in the UK Insolvency Act did not expressly treat privilege as “property” of the bankrupt which automatically transferred from the bankrupt to the trustee, nor was this a necessary implication of the vesting provisions in the Act: per Sir Etherton MR at [63].

94 The English High Court’s decision in Shlosberg was cited with approval by the High Court in Chan Kwong Shing Adrian, where Goh Yihan J (as he then was) noted that the definition of “property” in s 2(1) of the IRDA was similar to the wide definition of property in s 436(1) of the UK Insolvency Act: at [20]. Adopting a purposive approach, Goh J went on to observe that there was much force in limiting the broad width of the definition to potentially exclude property which is “peculiarly personal” to the bankrupt and which “cannot be conceivably sold off to repay creditors”: at [21]. In the words of Arnold J in his decision on the injunction application in Shlosberg, “[a]lthough privilege is enforceable in a court of law, its only effect is to enable the beneficiary of the privilege to resist disclosure of information in proceedings”; privilege “is not a marketable right, it has no commercial value and it cannot be realised or distributed to creditors”: Shlosberg at [121].

95 Sir Etherton MR, in dismissing the appeal against Arnold J’s decision in Shlosberg, held that it was “necessarily implicit” in s 311(1) of the UK Insolvency Act that the trustee was to take possession of documents (including privileged documents) to fulfil the trustee’s overriding purpose of getting in, realising and distributing the bankrupt’s estate. However, it was “not … necessarily implicit that the trustee can waive the bankrupt’s legal professional privilege in taking steps against third parties for the benefit of the bankrupt’s estate, desirable as that might be from the point of view of the creditors”: per Sir Etherton MR in Shlosberg at [70]–[71].

96 The English High Court and Court of Appeal in Sholsberg thus drew a distinction between the trustee in bankruptcy obtaining privileged information relating to the bankrupt’s estate and affairs for the statutory purpose of getting in and realising the bankrupt’s estate, and the trustee going further to treat the privilege as property belonging to him and using that same information in a manner which would amount to a waiver of the bankrupt’s privilege, including by deployment in proceedings with third parties.

97 The distinction was critical in Shlosberg because the bankrupt’s creditor had sought to rely on privileged information obtained by the trustees in bankruptcy pursuant to their statutory powers. The trustees in bankruptcy contended that they had the power to waive privilege over information obtained from the bankrupt, and that allowing third parties to use this privileged information would potentially reduce the claims on the bankruptcy estate, as a successful claim by the creditor against parties other than the bankrupt would correspondingly reduce the creditor’s claim on the bankrupt’s estate. The English Court of Appeal rejected this argument, holding that the trustees could only use information obtained pursuant to their powers under s 311(1) of the UK Insolvency Act in a way which would not amount to a waiver of privilege: per Sir Etherton MR in Shlosberg at [69].

98 The facts are slightly different in the present case. First, the emails were not obtained by the PTIBs pursuant to their statutory powers. Second, while Mr Pak was a third party, Ms Lim had been the one who voluntarily disclosed the emails to his solicitors, and they had in turn disclosed them to the PTIBs. In so far as Ms Lim’s real objection was to the disclosure of the emails to the PTIBs who were seeking to use that information to fulfil their statutory duties, s 370 of the IRDA provides a complete answer to that objection. However, this does not answer the separate question of whether the PTIBs would have been entitled to use the emails as evidence against Ms Lim’s objections, as deploying them in these proceedings would arguably amount to a waiver of Ms Lim’s privilege to the public at large.

99 On the one hand, it seems to me somewhat inconsistent to suggest that Parliament intended trustees in bankruptcy to be able to obtain privileged information without the bankrupt’s consent, but not to use that information in any proceedings. The incongruence is particularly stark where the trustees intend to use this information in proceedings to advance the very purpose of the statutory scheme – to enable them to get in, realise and distribute the bankrupt’s estate. Nevertheless, I accept that the English Court of Appeal expressly considered this policy and held that, absent the clearest statutory language, it cannot override the competing public interest in allowing a person to consult their lawyer in confidence, knowing that what they share will never be revealed without their consent. The statutory context under IRDA is substantially similar to that in the UK Insolvency Act, and legal professional privilege is also recognised as a core principle in the administration of justice in Singapore. It is enshrined in statute (see primarily ss 128 and 131 of the Evidence Act 1893 (2020 Rev Ed)) and “has been firmly entrenched as part of the common law system of justice for centuries”: Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (Publ), Singapore Branch v Asia Pacific Breweries (Singapore) Pte Ltd [2007] 2 SLR(R) 367 at [23].

100 Whether a trustee in bankruptcy may use and deploy privileged material in proceedings against a bankrupt’s objection raises a legal question of real importance to the administration of bankruptcy estates. Resolving it will require the court to ascertain Parliament’s intent against the backdrop of two distinct public policies, both of which are widely accepted as fundamental and compelling, but which pull in separate directions. Interesting though the issue may be, it would not be appropriate for me to express any definitive views here as I did not have the benefit of full legal arguments, since counsel did not address this issue in their written submissions. It was in any case unnecessary for me to decide this point given my earlier finding that Ms Lim had impliedly waived her privilege over the Advocatus emails.

101 Having addressed the issue of privilege, I come to the contents of the two emails sent by Ms Lim to Advocatus in 2022. The first email, sent on 20 April 2022, stated “I am actually holding‑in‑trust the above subject assets [ie, the Property and bank moneys unrelated to this case] for my sister”, and attached payment vouchers for five dividends from Xin Hui and Nan Hui. ¹³⁴ The second email, sent on 7 November 2022, asked the lawyers to “[p]lease see attachments below regarding my sister’s purchase of [the Property]”, including payment vouchers for five dividends as well. ¹³⁵

102 I accept that the emails corroborate Ms Lim’s case that she had treated the Property as being held on trust for the Deceased at least since 2022. However, they do not explain why no amendments were made to her position on the court record until 2024. According to Ms Lim, Advocatus never replied to her emails which is why her position in S 805 was only corrected in 2024, when “Advocatus finally help me to do this [sic]”. ¹³⁶

103 I find this explanation to be wholly unconvincing. It is in the first place highly implausible that a reputable law firm would ignore their client’s instructions in writing for two years. What is even more difficult for me to accept is that Ms Lim had, in the face of such prolonged silence and inaction on the part of her solicitors, still decided to continue to retain them to act for her. This appears to be yet another instance where Ms Lim conveniently sought to blame her lawyers when she could not satisfactorily explain her own actions.

104 Even if I accept the statements in the emails at face value and find that Ms Lim had asserted the trust in 2022 (and not just in 2024), this does not lend much further credence to Mr Pak’s case because Hin Leong was already mired in numerous lawsuits during this period. The fact remains that the existence of a trust was only first raised well after Hin Leong’s fraud had unravelled, at a point in time when Ms Lim must have been aware that her assets were at risk from Hin Leong’s numerous creditors. The only gloss the emails add to the picture is to suggest that Ms Lim may well have started testing the waters as to the possibility of shielding the Property from her creditors in 2022 before taking firmer steps to implement the plan in 2024.

105 Moreover, the contents of the emails introduced further inconsistencies into Mr Pak’s case. As the PTIBs pointed out, the dividends identified in the two emails were different from each other – the first email referred to the Five Dividends, while the second email referred to four of the Five Dividends plus Nan Hui Dividend 2 (instead of Nan Hui Dividend 4). ¹³⁷ Once again, Ms Lim’s own evidence was internally inconsistent, and the discrepancy was never properly explained. This inconsistency in the identification of the relevant dividends also meant that the sum total of the dividends in the second email (which was calculated to be S$4,381,000, using a conversion rate of S$1.37 per USD) ¹³⁸ was significantly different from the aggregate S$4,909,480 from the Five Dividends based on Mr Pak’s pleaded case (see [20] above) or S$5,069,480 from the six dividends based on his revised case.

106 Further, the fact that Ms Lim purported to have referred to Nan Hui Dividend 2 in 2022 contradicts her own supplementary AEIC where she said that she had omitted this dividend from her AEIC because she did not have the records of the S$160,000 withdrawal (see [58] above). She clearly had the payment voucher for Nan Hui Dividend 2 and the corresponding cheque in 2022. ¹³⁹ Ms Lim’s explanation for the inconsistency between the second 2022 email and her AEIC was to repeat that she “couldn’t locate the 160,000” at the time of her AEIC, ¹⁴⁰ which I find to be far from convincing in the face of the evidence.

107 Given the glaring inconsistencies in the evidence of Ms Lim and Mr OK Lim, I do not find them to be credible witnesses, and am driven to the irresistible conclusion that Mr Pak has failed to discharge his burden of proving that the Five (or six) Dividends were meant to be repayments by the Deceased to Mr OK Lim for the Property. Instead, it appears to me that the dividends were simply cherry-picked ex post to corroborate the case for a trust.

108 There were other aspects of Mr Pak’s witnesses’ evidence which I found suspect, such as the belated LOD issued by HHP in 2024 demanding that Ms Lim transfer the Property to Mr Pak when he turned 21, when Mr Pak had already turned 21 in 2018. ¹⁴¹ I see much force in the PTIBs’ suggestion that given the timing and circumstances of the LOD, it is more likely that it was part of a paper trail created to persuade the court that the Property did not belong to Ms Lim. ¹⁴²

109 All things considered, I find on a balance of probabilities that the Deceased did not reimburse Mr OK Lim for the purchase price of the Property by using the dividends.

110 Having decided that there was no express common intention and no purchase price contribution giving rise to an inferred common intention, there is little room left to infer any common intention. Although an inferred common intention may arise from other forms of conduct in “exceptional situations”, the guidance from the Court of Appeal is that the emphasis should be directed at the direct financial contribution to the purchase price by the person claiming the beneficial interest: Geok Hong Co Pte Ltd v Koh Ai Gek [2019] 1 SLR 908 (“Geok Hong Co”) at [80]–[81].

111 Nonetheless, I accept that the subsequent conduct of parties can be considered to ascertain their intention which subsisted at the time of acquisition: Tia Sock Kiu Sally v Tia Oon Lai [2026] 1 SLR 453 at [47]. I therefore go on to consider whether there is sufficiently compelling evidence for me to infer a common intention based on the parties’ conduct after the acquisition of the Property.

112 Mr Pak relied on several indicia of the Deceased’s possession and control over the Property, such as her occupation and renovation of the Property, ¹⁴³ and his payment of the property taxes and MCST charges for the Property, ¹⁴⁴ as manifestations of the Deceased’s beneficial ownership. To my mind, these do not constitute sufficiently compelling evidence of a common intention constructive trust as the parties’ subsequent conduct was ultimately equivocal at best.

113 Mr Pak submits that the “key pointer” of the Deceased’s beneficial ownership of the Property is that Ms Lim never resided in the Property, while the Deceased portrayed the traits of a homeowner when the Property was ready to be taken over from the Developers. This was evidenced by the fact that the handover and defects list for the Property identified the Deceased as the recipient of the handover, the Deceased was given the access card and other keys for the Property, ¹⁴⁵ the renovation plans bear the Deceased’s name, ¹⁴⁶ and the Deceased also made “structural” changes to the Property in the form of feng shui settings. ¹⁴⁷

114 I accept the truth of these assertions based on the documents, which also show that the renovation of the Property was conducted according to the Deceased’s wishes. ¹⁴⁸ However, Mr Pak adduced absolutely no evidence to show the Deceased had paid for the costs of the renovations, and in fact candidly admitted that he could not find any such evidence. ¹⁴⁹

115 In any event, the fact that an individual undertakes renovation works for a property does not, without more, give rise to an inference of a common intention for that individual to acquire a beneficial interest in the property: Geok Hong Co at [85]. Renovation works do not necessarily indicate an ownership interest in the property, especially when the works are undertaken by an occupant who naturally has an interest in making the property suit their liking: Geok Hong Co at [88]. There is no dispute that the Property was first occupied by the Deceased and Mr Pak. It was therefore entirely natural for the Deceased, who was just divorced and looking for a new place to settle down with her young child, to want to renovate the Property to suit their lifestyle and needs. There is nothing on the evidence that compels the inference that the Deceased must have undertaken the renovations pursuant to a subsisting beneficial interest in the Property.

116 I accept that Ms Lim never resided in the Property, but this in itself is insufficient to infer a lack of beneficial interest. The length of Mr Pak’s residence with the Deceased in the Property was also extremely short relative to the entire period of ownership. The Deceased and Mr Pak had only lived in the Property for at most two to three years. This was shorter than (or at most as long as) Mr Evan Lim’s residence at the Property from 2008 to 2010 or 2011. In fact, it is undisputed that the Property has been left vacant for a large part of the preceding 25 years, which makes proof of beneficial ownership by way of occupation a largely speculative exercise.

117 I also do not give much weight to the Lim family’s general observations that Ms Lim never asserted control over the Property, ¹⁵⁰ that the belongings of Mr Pak and the Deceased were left at the Property, ¹⁵¹ and that Mr Evan Lim had sought the Deceased’s permission to stay at the Property. ¹⁵² These assertions are bare and unsupported by any contemporaneous record or evidence (cf. Jenny Prawesti at [109]; Lim Choo Hin v Lim Sai Ing Peggy [2022] 1 SLR 873 at [16]). Moreover, the fact that no other member of the Lim family had asserted beneficial ownership over the Property (until Mr Pak made his claim in these proceedings) can also be explained on the basis that they simply treated the Property as a spare place of residence for the family, which on its own says nothing about the beneficial interest of the Property.

118 As for the maintenance works that the Deceased undertook from 2002 to 2004, such as arranging for pest control services and servicing electronic appliances like the air-conditioner, refrigerator and washing machine, ¹⁵³ these could easily be accounted for by the fact that the Deceased was actively using the household items in the Property at the time, and were again not necessarily indicative of beneficial ownership (see, eg, Er Kok Yong at [32]). While Mr Pak emphasised that some of these maintenance works were done from 2013 to 2016, after the Deceased had already moved out of the Property, ¹⁵⁴ I do not consider these piecemeal expenses to be sufficiently compelling assertions of her rights as a beneficial owner.

119 Ms Lim admitted at trial that the Deceased did not pay for the property taxes or MCST charges for the Property from 2000 until 2015 (after which there were alleged repayments using the Five Dividends: see [55] above): ¹⁵⁵

120 Ms Lim took the position that the Deceased’s surplus funds from the Five Dividends were used to pay for the MCST charges and property taxes from 2016 to 2020. Ms Lim also pointed to certain payments made by Mr Pak for the property taxes and MCST charges, after the Deceased’s death in 2017. ¹⁵⁶ Ms Lim posited that the MCST charges were paid by or on behalf of Mr Pak from January 2021 to March 2026, and that the property taxes were paid by or on behalf of Mr Pak from 2021 to 2025. ¹⁵⁷ This was relied upon to show that the Property was treated within the Lim family as belonging to Mr Pak after his mother’s death.

121 In my view, Ms Lim’s evidence on this point was again self‑serving and misleading. The documents only show that bank transfers were made from Mr Pak’s bank accounts to the MCST from July 2024 to February 2026, ¹⁵⁸ and that GIRO deductions were made from Mr Pak’s bank accounts for the property taxes from 2024 to 2025. ¹⁵⁹ Prior to 2024, there was no evidence of any payments made by Mr Pak towards the Property. Instead, these payments were made by either Ms Lim, Mr Seow or Mdm Tan.

122 Ms Lim claims that these previous payments were made purportedly on Mr Pak’s behalf, but this is both convenient and unverifiable. The documents merely show the invoices addressed to Ms Lim as the registered proprietor, and handwritten annotations on the invoices of the initials of the alleged payor, with no accompanying notes or other evidence of such payor making payment “on behalf of” Mr Pak. ¹⁶⁰

123 All roads seem to lead back to the year of 2024, which is when Ms Lim changed her affidavit evidence on her ownership of the Property and applied for bankruptcy. If anything, the documents suggest that it was only after Hin Leong’s fraud unravelled that the Lims conceived of a plan to re‑characterise the Property as one held on trust for the Deceased, before seeking to implement their plan and corroborate that story with the changes to Ms Lim’s affidavit evidence and direct records of Mr Pak’s bank transfers.

124 While Mr Pak’s case on subsequent conduct focused on what was done after the acquisition of the Property, what was not done is also telling. Ms Lim, despite her insistence on the Deceased’s beneficial ownership, never transferred the Property to the Deceased from 2000 to 2017. Nor did she transfer the Property to Mr Pak after the Deceased passed away in 2017 or when Mr Pak turned 21 years old in 2018.

125 Ms Lim proffered several explanations for this on the stand:

(a) While Ms Lim admitted that “[t]here was nothing stopping [her]” from transferring the Property to the Deceased from 2000 to 2017, she says she did not transfer it because the Deceased never asked her to do so and “was comfortable” for her to hold onto the Property. ¹⁶¹

(b) She did not transfer the Property to Mr Pak after the Deceased passed away in 2017 and he turned 21 in 2018, as “[w]e were busy trying to prepare to send him overseas for his studies”. ¹⁶² This was echoed by Mr Pak in his testimony. ¹⁶³

(c) From 2018 to 2021, she did not transfer the Property to Mr Pak as she “was not well”, the transfer was “not urgent” and Mr Pak was in the US. ¹⁶⁴

(d) In 2021, she could not transfer the Property due to the Mareva injunction. ¹⁶⁵ She was questioned on both days of her cross‑examination whether she asked her lawyers to apply for a variation of the Mareva injunction to release the Property, and her answers were inconsistent. Her first answer was an unequivocal “Yes”, ¹⁶⁶ but this changed to “I really don’t know” the next day. ¹⁶⁷

126 Needless to say, I do not find these specious excuses to be persuasive. As the PTIBs pointed out, Ms Lim had ample opportunity to transfer the Property to the Deceased – more than two and a half decades since 2000 when the alleged common intention was formed ¹⁶⁸ – but did not. The Developers’ policy against reselling properties post-OTP only explains why the Property was not initially registered in the Deceased’s name, but does not explain why Ms Lim did not transfer the Property post-completion. ¹⁶⁹ Even after the Deceased had purportedly repaid the purchase price of the Property in 2015 using the Five (or six) Dividends, no transfer to the Deceased was ever initiated.

127 While I accept Mr Pak’s contention that a property owner’s omission to transfer legal title over the property to the beneficial owner does not negate the latter’s beneficial interest, ¹⁷⁰ such an omission is nevertheless a relevant factor in ascertaining whether a common intention existed, especially when Mr Pak’s own case is that Ms Lim was supposed to transfer the Property to him when he turned 21 years old (see, eg, Michelle Lim at [29]–[30]). Indeed, Ms Lim admitted that there was nothing stopping her from transferring the Property and her omission to do so was entirely by choice. ¹⁷¹ She had, after all, transferred Unit #10-01 to her husband in 2002: see [6] above.

128 The PTIBs further contend that Ms Lim could easily have declared an express trust over the Property in favour of the Deceased or Mr Pak as she was familiar with trust arrangements. ¹⁷² This familiarity, the PTIBs argued, is evident from Ms Lim’s declarations in her S 805 affidavit that certain shares were held on trust by others for her, and that she held certain insurance policies on trust for Mr Pak (see [46] and [67] above). The Lim family also had the practice of declaring trusts in favour of each other – for example, Mr Evan Lim declared an express trust over two immoveable properties in favour of his mother, Mdm Tan, in 1995 and 2004. ¹⁷³ Mr OK Lim also held shares in Sheng Xing Holdings Ltd on trust for his sister. ¹⁷⁴

129 Mr Pak countered that the absence of a written declaration of trust did not mean there is no trust, especially as the Deceased was Ms Lim’s sister. ¹⁷⁵ He suggested that trust arrangements involving third parties or employees had to be formalised as they were not family members, while Mr Evan Lim’s declaration of a trust for his mother Mdm Tan was an outlier as it had been made pursuant to legal advice. ¹⁷⁶

130 While I accept that families would not ordinarily transact with each other with the same degree of formality as would be expected in a corporate context, written trust documents did not seem to be uncommon in the Lim family. Indeed, Mr Evan Lim agreed that “as a family, [they] commonly use nominee and trust arrangements”. Mr Evan Lim’s evidence that his formal declaration of trusts for the properties he held on trust for his mother was usual practice ¹⁷⁷ did not sit easily with Mr Pak’s suggestion that it was an exception rather than the norm for trust arrangements within their family to be formalised. Nor did Mr Evan Lim ever testify that these were only drawn up because of legal advice.

131 Taking the above factors altogether, I am not satisfied that there is sufficient compelling evidence to demonstrate any common intention between Ms Lim and the Deceased for the latter to have beneficial ownership over the Property. It is therefore unnecessary for me to consider if there was any detrimental reliance on the alleged common intention, save to say that, in light of my findings above, this would also fail to the extent that Mr Pak relied on the Deceased’s purported repayments of the purchase price to Mr OK Lim by way of the dividend transfers in 2015 and any purported renovation payments (as I have found that these are not borne out by the evidence: see [109] and [114] above).

132 A resulting trust arises when property is transferred to a person (“transferee”) by or at the direction of another (“transferor”) in circumstances where the transferor lacks the intention to benefit the transferee. A resulting trust is presumed to arise if the transferee does not provide the whole of the consideration for the transfer to the transferor. The presumption is that the transferor lacked the intention to benefit the transferee, and a resulting trust arises in response to this lack of intention: Ng Lai Kuen Priscilla Elizabeth v Ng Choon Keong Steven [2023] SGHC 343 (“Priscilla Ng”) at [38], citing Lau Siew Kim v Yeo Guan Chye [2008] 2 SLR(R) 108 (“Lau Siew Kim”) at [34]–[35].

133 A resulting trust may arise in two situations: (a) where there is a “voluntary payment”; or (b) where there is a failure of an express trust: Hajjah Noor Jehan bte Mohamed Ghouse v Nur Fairuz Magnus [2026] SGHC 83 (“Hajjah”) at [80]; Er Kok Yong at [19].

134 The focus of Mr Pak’s case was the voluntary payment scenario. His argument was that a resulting trust arose in favour of the Deceased as she had agreed to repay Mr OK Lim for the purchase of the Property in 2000, and did in fact do so when the Five Dividends were channelled into the DB Joint Account in 2015.

135 I have already found that the Deceased did not pay the purchase moneys for the Property. This is fatal to Mr Pak’s claim in resulting trust as it means that there was no voluntary transfer from the Deceased which could give rise to a presumption of resulting trust. For good measure, I would add that the claim was, from the outset, already unsustainable in law.

136 It is axiomatic that a resulting trust needs to be crystallised at the time the property in question was acquired. The extent of the parties’ beneficial interests under a resulting trust must be determined at the time the property is purchased, as that is when the trust arises: Su Emmanuel at [87] and Chan Yuen Lan at [53], citing Lau Siew Kim at [112]–[113]. Thus, subsequent payments toward mortgages or housing loans may only be taken into account if they are referable to a prior agreement between parties, at the time the property was acquired and the loan was taken out, as to who would be liable to repay the loan: Su Emmanuel at [89], cited in Koh You Quan v Koh Hock Meng [2026] 3 SLR 170 at [32] and DOO v DOP [2025] SGHC 85 (“DOO”) at [17]. In the absence of any such agreement at the time of acquisition, it would be “wrong in principle to calculate subsequent payments as part of the parties’ contributions to the purchase price as that would mean that the parties’ interests under the resulting trust are in a state of flux, increasing or decreasing as the case may be when one party makes repayment of the mortgage”: per Choo Han Teck J in DOO at [17], citing Su Emmanuel at [92].

137 In this case, it is undisputed that at the time the Property was acquired and the SFL Loan taken out in 1997, the Deceased was not party to any alleged agreement or loan arrangement with Ms Lim or Mr OK Lim. There is thus no prior agreement at the time of acquisition to speak of. It is not open to Mr Pak to argue that Mr OK Lim had agreed to finance Ms Lim’s acquisition of the Property in 1997, ¹⁷⁸ and that the subject of this agreement changed to the Deceased in 2000. The prior agreement must be at the point of acquisition and it must identify the ultimate source of the funds used to finance the loan: Lau Siew Kim at [116]–[117]; Tan Yok Koon v Tan Choo Suan [2017] 1 SLR 654 (“Tan Yok Koon”) at [142]. Following the Court of Appeal’s guidance in Su Emmanuel at [90], subsequent conduct would only go toward proving the agreement made at the date of the loan, not modifying it.

138 Therefore, even if Ms Lim and Mr OK Lim had a prior agreement between themselves in 1997, any subsequent agreement that may have arisen as between Mr OK Lim, Ms Lim and the Deceased in 2000 was a separate agreement that was clearly not made as at the time of acquisition of the Property.

139 In the absence of any common intention constructive trust or resulting trust, there is nothing to rebut the presumption that equity follows the law. Ms Lim, as the legal owner of the Property, is also its beneficial owner.

140 It remains for me to address Mr Pak’s final claim in unjust enrichment, which in my view is also bound to fail.

141 The elements required to successfully maintain an unjust enrichment claim are that: (a) the defendant has been enriched; (b) the enrichment was at the claimant’s expense, (c) the enrichment was unjust; and (d) no defences apply: Wee Chiaw Sek Anna v Ng Li-Ann Genevieve [2013] 3 SLR 801 (“Anna Wee”) at [98].

142 I agree with the PTIBs that there was no enrichment at the Deceased’s expense, nor did any unjust factor apply on the facts.

143 Mr Pak submits that (a) Ms Lim was enriched by her legal ownership of the Property; (b) at the expense of the Deceased, who paid all sums toward the purchase, financing, renovation and upkeep of the Property; and (c) such enrichment was unjust. ¹⁷⁹

144 For a claimant to show that a defendant’s enrichment was at their expense, the claimant must show a nexus between the value that was once attributable to them and the benefit received by the defendant: Anna Wee at [113]. This nexus could be established either by establishing that: (a) the defendant had received an immediate benefit from the claimant which establishes a direct personal link; or (b) the defendant had received a benefit traceable from the claimant’s assets, which establishes an indirect link through the value in the defendant’s hands that once belonged to the claimant: Anna Wee at [115]–[116].

145  Mr Pak thus had to prove that the benefit received by Ms Lim (ie, the Property) was traceable to the Deceased’s moneys. Again, as I have found that the Deceased did not provide the purchase moneys for the Property by repaying Mr OK Lim with the Five (or six) Dividends in 2015, there can be no enrichment at the Deceased’s expense.

146 As for the unjust factor, this was not clearly pleaded in Mr Pak’s statement of claim. There were only vague statements that “the Property was agreed and intended to belong beneficially to the Deceased”, that the Deceased had “no intention … to make a gift or voluntary advancement to Ms Lim”, and that it would be “inequitable and unconscionable” for Ms Lim or the PTIBs to retain the Property or its benefits. ¹⁸⁰ In closing submissions, Mr Pak clarified that the unjust factor he was relying on is failure of basis, as the basis for the Deceased’s payments toward the purchase, financing, renovation and upkeep of the Property was that she would have beneficial ownership of the Property. ¹⁸¹

147 I can accept that while Mr Pak’s pleadings were far from clear, it could be inferred from what was pleaded that the unjust factor he was relying on was failure of basis. To succeed in establishing a failure of basis, Mr Pak had to prove that: (a) there was a shared basis for the transfers in respect of which restitution is sought; and (b) this basis failed: Benzline Auto Pte Ltd v Supercars Lorinser Pte Ltd [2018] 1 SLR 239 at [46]. This is an objective determination based on what has been communicated between the parties.

148 But the key plank of this aspect of Mr Pak’s claim in unjust enrichment was identical to his case for a common intention constructive trust – that the purported transfers were made pursuant to a shared understanding between Ms Lim, Mr OK Lim and the Deceased, for the Deceased to become the beneficial owner of the Property. As I have already rejected the existence of any such common intention or agreement, it follows that his unjust enrichment claim must also be dismissed as it runs into the exact same evidential difficulties.

149 I also note that flowing from this claim, one of the reliefs Mr Pak sought was an order that an equitable lien or charge be imposed over the Property in favour of the Deceased’s estate to secure repayment of the sums found due to the estate. ¹⁸² An equitable lien is proprietary in nature and constitutes a caveatable interest: Philip Antony Jeyaretnam v Kulandaivelu Malayaperumal [2020] 3 SLR 738 at [38]. 

150 It is unsettled whether proprietary remedies are available in a claim for unjust enrichment: Alwie Handoyo v Tjong Very Sumito [2013] 4 SLR 308 at [115]–[122]. As I have already found that Mr Pak’s unjust enrichment claim fails on the evidence, it is unnecessary for me to consider this issue any further, save to point out that the weight of Singapore authorities appears to militate against the recognition of proprietary remedies for unjust enrichment claims, particularly where the claim arises due to an alleged failure of basis: see, eg, Ho Dat Khoon v Chan Wai Leen [2023] SGHC 326 at [73]–[74]; Zaiton bte Adom v Nafsiah bte Wagiman [2023] 3 SLR 533 at [206]–[207]; Ng Chee Tian v Ng Chee Pong [2025] 3 SLR 235 at [72]–[78].

151 The case for the Deceased’s beneficial ownership over the Property was fraught with inconsistencies from the outset. The Lims’ (in particular, Ms Lim’s and Mr OK Lim’s) attempts to explain them away only multiplied them – their answers contradicted themselves or each other, were belied by objective documentary evidence and, when the documents ran out, retreated into evasion and implausible excuses. As Sir Walter Scott put it in Marmion: “what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive”. At the end of the day, their conduct supports a strong inference that the present action was brought not to vindicate any proprietary right of the Deceased or Mr Pak in the Property, but in a last‑ditch attempt to place the Property beyond the reach of Ms Lim’s creditors.

152 I therefore dismiss Mr Pak’s claims in their entirety. I will hear parties separately on costs.