The facts are relatively straightforward. The plaintiff and defendant are husband and wife. The husband, while in very ill health, transferred his interest in a government flat to his wife and himself as joint tenants (in order to provide for her should he predecease her), and they were registered as such. Subsequently, he recovered, and brought an action to compel the wife to transfer her interest in the flat back to him, because the wife by this time was herself mentally incapacitated (and therefore incapable of writing a will), and he did not want the flat being distributed according to the intestacy rules in the event that he predeceased her. 

The questions for the court were whether, on these facts, there was a donatio mortis causa; whether it operated as an oral will in contravention of the Wills Act; and whether it operated as a trust so as to be defeated by the provisions of the Housing Development Act (HDA) (which governed ownership of government flats). The first two questions received, respectively, affirmative and negative answers in short order, and so the last question was the main issue.

The High Court held that, at the point of delivery, a donatio mortis causa operated as a gift rather than an express or implied trust, but that, at the point of revocation (upon the donor's recovery), the donor's ability to reclaim the property was to be explained either in terms of equity's refusal to perfect a gift (if legal title had not passed), or in terms of a remedial constructive trust (if it had). This last holding is of course rather controversial given that Singapore trusts law generally follows English trusts law, and the court does not seem particularly concerned about the radical departure from English law in this respect.

Finally, the court held that, notwithstanding that a remedial constructive trust was involved, the situation did not fall foul of the HDA, and granted the order sought by the plaintiff. 

Kind regards,

Colin