A $5.5m home purchase was caught in an inheritance dispute — what every Singapore homebuyer can learn from it

Among all of the aspects of property ownership that come to mind, the one called ‘inheritance dispute’ is one of the least popular topics.

It is often overlooked but a recent legal case that made its way through the courts has brought this to the fore. 

It showed how, even in a straightforward property purchase, you can become entangled in litigation that has nothing to do with you as the buyer.

In this case that was brought before the Family Justice Courts, a purchaser bought a landed home in Siglap for $5.5 million after seeing it listed on PropertyGuru. 

He exercised the Option To Purchase (OTP) and lodged the usual caveat. He even got so far as securing the mortgage, signing the Sale & Purchase Agreement, and moving in with his family.

Registration blocked

However, it was only after this that the problems started to emerge. 

When he attempted to register himself as the legal owner of the property, the registration was blocked. It turns out that the widow of the former owner was challenging the validity of the late owner’s will. 

As part of this process, she had obtained an injunction against the executors of the estate.

(Translation: To make sure nobody messes with the money or property while they fight it out in court, she got what is essentially a legal “pause button". The injunction means the executors  the people handling the estate — can’t sell the house, move any funds, etc. until the judge finally decides if that will is actually legit. Everything is stuck in legal limbo until the end credits roll for this drama.)

This is why the buyer’s attempt to register his legal ownership had been blocked, even if he had zero involvement in the dispute.

Fortunately for the buyer, Justice Chan Seng Onn — who was the judge for this case — concluded that the injunction had never been intended to stop the registration.

Instead, it was only meant to preserve the estate’s assets and the sale proceeds received by the executors. 

The buyer’s registration could therefore proceed, while the dispute over who was ultimately entitled to the money continued separately.

In other words, the buyer still gets the house. For the widow and the estate, the fight now shifts to the money for the house. 

The proceeds are preserved within the estate until the Court determines who is ultimately entitled to it.

While this isn’t a situation most homebuyers will ever encounter, the judgment does offer some useful reminders.

Legal significance of OTP 

First, it’s a reminder that exercising the OTP carries more legal significance than many buyers realise.

Note that in the eyes of the Court, the sale was concluded when the buyer exercised the OTP, not when the purchase was completed nearly three months later. 

That distinction proved crucial since, by the time the injunction was granted, the property had already been legally sold. This was held to be the case even though the legal title had yet to be transferred.

Second, lodging a caveat isn’t just an administrative detail. After exercising the OTP, the buyer lodged a caveat to protect his interest in the property. The bank later did the same when it granted the mortgage. 

The judge repeatedly referred to these caveats throughout his judgment. 

By contrast, although the widow obtained an injunction, the Court also noted that she never lodged a caveat based on that injunction.

The conveyancing process

Even without knowing the finer points of land law, it’s a reminder that the conveyancing process exists for a reason. 

The various legal steps — including lodging a caveat — aren’t just formalities; they’re part of the protection you receive when buying a property.

A conversation that I had with a reader last year came to my mind while I was reading this judgment.

He was a recent Permanent Resident (PR) who was buying his first home, and I remember he was adamant about exclusively buying a new launch property. 

I initially assumed this was about wanting newer facilities, or some kind of symbolic significance about his new start in Singapore.

As it turned out, he reasoning was much simpler: In his home country, property ownership disputes involving resale homes aren’t uncommon.

In fact, he’d experienced it himself. In 2011 he had bought a sizeable landed property back home, and gone through the proper process with a lawyer, realtor, etc. 

Yet, a week after purchasing the property, he received a notice that two other parties were also claiming an interest in it. This was something his law firm had never spotted throughout the transaction process.

The dispute was eventually resolved but it took close to 1.5 years, and he estimated the legal fees — even though none of it was his fault — came close to $12,000. In his words “Even when you’re in the right and you win, you still have to pay it out of pocket.”

It made me realise how Singaporeans take the securities and processes woven into our property market for granted.

An advantage in buying a unit in a new launch project is that issues like inheritance disputes, competing ownership claims don’t arise. 

In other housing markets where the legal process is not as rigorous, it’s a significant concern that it influences the purchasing decision for many homebuyers.

But since such legal entanglements are so rare in Singapore, and often so efficiently dealt with, we seldom consider it a resale advantage at all. 

Judgments like the one above reinforce our ongoing confidence: The Court effectively aided the buyer in the transaction, while allowing the estate dispute to continue separately.

But perhaps that’s made us a little complacent in the buying and selling process here.

As more Singaporeans look overseas for residential investment opportunities, it may be worth asking how many assumptions we unconsciously carry with us. 

We expect title searches to be reliable, ownership to be straightforward, conveyancing to be routine, etc. Those expectations are well-founded here, but they aren’t universal.

It’s a reminder that when buying property abroad, we’re not just buying into another market: we’re buying into another legal system. 

And quite often, the biggest risks are the ones we never even thought to ask about because back home, they’ve never been an issue. 

I really do worry about this, as more buyers cast their eyes abroad due to the high ABSD rates we face in our local residential market.

The flip side is that this is also a reminder of what Singapore gets right.

Most of us think of resale homes in terms of age, renovation costs or lease decay. We rarely consider the legal infrastructure that makes resale housing “safe".

Cases like this show that — even when unexpected disputes arise — the system is generally designed to protect a genuine buyer. 

It’s just important to go through the proper steps, and really make the most of the available protections.

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