Is your name on all the assets you paid / are paying for today?
Frankly, if you like to share with someone to buy a property, it’s best to do it properly. The Sale and Purchase Agreement should have your name too and it’s not good enough to just base on trust. It may not be due to trust sometimes because circumstances change / happen. Here’s one case where the buyer wanted to save on taxes and thus did not have her name on the property. She trusted her MBA course-mate instead.
Then, she got involved in a court case where the wife of the man she trusted with the property purchase wanted the court to declare that she had no stake in the property. Oh dear, not an easy time for her definitely.
Article in straitstimes.com A woman (Ms. Yeow) and a married man bought a $1.7 million house together as an investment, but put the property under the man’s sole name to “save costs” on stamp duties and property tax. The agreement was for the house to be sold and the profits shared once the price hits S$3.5 million. Ms Yeow was transferring $7,000 to $10,000 every month to Mr Ramasamy to pay the mortgage. her total contribution was S$833,600 and Mr Ramasamy’s as S$310,000.
The married man’s wife staked her claim on the house in Hougang. Ms. Yeow was a course-mate to the man in a Master of Business Administration programme. Ms. Yeow showed proof that she contributed 73 percent to the purchase and related expenses. The judge ruled that after having carefully analysed the evidence, Ms. Yeow has indeed proven that she and Mr Ramasamy had intended for their beneficial interest in the property to be apportioned according to each person’s financial contributions. Please do read the article in full here: Article in straitstimes.com
An oral agreement is still a valid agreement
By the way, an agreement does not need to be in written form in order to be valid. An oral agreement is also valid BUT it would be harder to prove and if there’s just an oral agreement between two persons, then it gets even harder to prove if both parties are saying different things. This is why when it comes to something which is S$1.14 million (RM3.53 million), better not rely on oral agreements and it’s not always possible to prove what was agreed or in this case, showing proof that she did pay for the property and that her stake was higher than the person whose name is on the property.
I think in this case, justice prevailed if all the facts of the case are as per reported. Happy understanding and learning from such a case yeah.
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