Description

This seminar will be structured in two parts. The first part will be a primer on the law of resulting trusts in Singapore, as applicable to real property and personal property generally. Important developments in recent years and divergences from the English position will be highlighted. The second part will focus on the applicability of the resulting trust analysis to an important species of personal property – the joint bank account. Postmortem disputes over beneficial entitlement to joint bank accounts when one party has contributed all or most of the funds have raised important questions relating to the legal nature of these accounts, resulting trust analysis, and contractual interpretation. The Privy Council (Whitlock v Moree [2017] UKPC 44) recently considered these issues in a split decision. The majority chose to depart from conventional wisdom about how beneficial entitlement to these accounts is to be determined. The implications flowing from this new approach will be considered.

About The Speaker

Jeremiah Lau is a Sheridan Fellow at the National University of Singapore. He graduated from NUS Law with a Bachelor of Laws (First Class Honours) in 2015. He is an academic fellow of the Centre for Banking & Finance Law, and a member of the Centre for Legal Theory. Jeremiah teaches and researches in the law of equity and trusts. He is also interested in the private law (particularly property rights) applicable to money, negotiable instruments and payment systems. His work is published and forthcoming in local and international journals.

About The Moderator

Dr Sandra Booysen is an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore, deputy-director of the Centre for Banking & Finance Law, and serves on the editorial board of two academic journals: Singapore Journal of Legal Studies and International Banking and Securities Law (published by Brill). Sandra’s research interests straddle contract and banking law and she has published her work in a variety of international journals. In 2017, Sandra co-edited a volume entitled Can Banks Still Keep a Secret? Bank Secrecy in Financial Centres Around the World which was published by Cambridge University Press.