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Case and Comment
WHEN do resulting trusts arise, and why? These questions were the subject of serious inquiry in the 1990s, following influential work by Peter Birks and Robert Chambers, which argued that resulting trusts arise to reverse unjust enrichment. The House of Lords in Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington London Borough Council [1996] A.C. 669 remarked that the Birks/Chambers thesis was "avowedly experimental, written to test the temperature of the water", but that "the temperature of the water must be regarded as decidedly cold". Following Westdeutsche, the issue has received little consideration, although academic interest in the debate remains. The recent decision of the Singapore Court of Appeal in Chan Yuen Lan v See Fong Mun [2014] SGCA 36 considered this issue in detail and is therefore worth examining.
In Chan, a married couple had purchased a house which was then registered in the sole name of the wife. Their relationship broke down, and the husband brought proceedings claiming an equitable interest in the house. Unlike in England and Wales, where a common intention constructive trust would likely have been the first port of call following Stack v Dowden [2007] UKHL 17; [2007] 2 A.C. 432 and Jones v Kernott [2011] UKSC 53; [2012] 1 A.C. 776, Chan was argued on the basis of a resulting trust. The court found that the wife had contributed 15.83 per cent. of the purchase price to the property and the husband the remaining 84.17 per cent. The starting presumption was therefore that the beneficial interests of the parties in the property were in that ratio. As the court found that the husband did not intend to benefit the wife by his contributions to the property, it held that the wife held 84.17 per cent. of the beneficial interest in the property on resulting trust for the husband.
In a wide-ranging joint judgment of the court, delivered by Rajah J.A., many issues were considered. These include the interplay between the common intention constructive trust and the resulting trust in Singapore, and different approaches taken in jurisdictions such as England and Wales, Australia, and Canada towards quantifying beneficial interests in both "sole name" and "joint name" cases. These issues cannot be...