Kok Zhen Yen and another v Beth Candice Wu

Ms Kok Zhen Yen and Mr Cheong Wee Min, a married couple, owned an investment property bought in 2009. In 2022 they decided to sell it to fund their retirement and granted an option to purchase at $1,280,000. Their daughter-in-law, Ms Beth Candice Wu, who was in divorce proceedings with their son, lodged a caveat on 7 December 2022 claiming to be repaid, from the sale proceeds, monthly payments she said she had made towards a bank loan secured on the property. The claimants applied to the Registrar under s 127(2) of the Land Titles Act 1993 to cancel it; she did not respond and it was cancelled on 15 February 2023. A week before that, on 7 February 2023, she lodged a second caveat on substantially the same grounds, claiming $93,228.

The claimants' account was that they had taken the loan to fund their son's medical studies in Australia, transferred $209,679 to the couple's joint account, and that the monthly payments were the couple's repayments of that personal loan. They brought Originating Application No 208 of 2023 seeking removal of the second caveat, damages under s 128(1), an injunction against further caveats and two declarations.

1. Whether the defendant showed cause why the second caveat should not be removed under s 127(1)
2. Whether a contractual right to be paid from the sale proceeds of land is a caveatable interest under s 115(3)(a)
3. Whether the defendant was liable to pay compensation under s 128(1)
4. Whether the court could and should restrain the defendant from lodging further caveats, and whether declarations should be made

The caveator bears the burden of justifying a caveat. The defendant's only evidence of an agreement to repay her was a set of forwarded WhatsApp messages of unclear origin, and the key message, promising to help pay off a debt when the property was sold, if anything supported the claimants. Bank records, the couple's ongoing payments, and a spreadsheet by the son referring to "Mum's loan" of $210,000 showed that the couple owed the claimants, not the reverse. The defendant had also used A$115,032 of the money for her own business.

In any event, following Salbiah bte Adnan v Micro Credit Pte Ltd [2015] 1 SLR 601, a mere contractual right to be paid out of sale proceeds is purely monetary and not an interest in the proceeds of sale of land; allowing it to support a caveat would turn such agreements into quasi-security. An unpaid vendor's lien is different because equity recognises the lien itself.

The second caveat was lodged wrongfully and without reasonable cause, since the defendant would not even defend the first. But s 128(1) compensates only loss actually suffered, and the claimants proved none beyond general distress, so damages were refused.

The Act bars a repeat caveat after a lapse under s 121 but not after removal under s 127, a gap the court urged Parliament to close. Until then, the power in s 127(1) to make such order as seems just, read with the court's general powers and s 130, allows an injunction. The court must first find conduct within s 128(1), then ask whether the circumstances warrant an injunction, considering repeated similar caveats, intention to annoy or harass, and loss damages cannot remedy. All three were present: two baseless caveats, the timing of the second to sidestep the first's lapse, and the risk of a disrupted sale. The declarations merely duplicated findings already made.

The High Court allowed the application in part. It ordered the Registrar to remove the second caveat forthwith and restrained the defendant from lodging further caveats against the property. The prayer for damages to be assessed under s 128(1) and the two declarations were refused.