Michelle Lim Yan Yi v Leow Quek Shiong & Anor

Facts

Michelle Lim Yan Yi applied in Originating Application No 436 of 2025 for a declaration that three AIA insurance policies were held on trust for her sole benefit by her father, Mr Lim Chee Meng, a director of Hin Leong Trading (Pte.) Ltd. Mr Lim was adjudged bankrupt on 19 December 2024. The respondents, his private trustees in bankruptcy, said the policies vested in his bankrupt estate.

The three policies were among eight that Mr Lim took out while she was a minor, with him as policy owner and her as the named insured. She claimed he intended to hold them on trust until she turned 21 and then transfer them to her. It was not disputed that no trust deed was executed. The three policies had a surrender value of slightly over $521,000 as at 16 January 2025. The other five had no surrender value, and the trustees had told AIA they had no interest in them.

Hin Leong's liquidators had sued its directors, including Mr Lim, in Suit 805, alleging fraud and breach of directors' duties, and obtained a worldwide Mareva injunction on 21 May 2021. The applicant relied on a letter of 26 October 2021 from Mr Lim's lawyers saying the eight policies were held on trust for her, an enclosed photograph of a letter said to be from an AIA personal wealth manager to the same effect, an e-mail of 10 March 2025 from Mr Lim to the trustees, and extracts from his bankruptcy affidavit. Mr Lim filed no affidavit in the application.

Issues

1. Whether the documents relied on showed that Mr Lim intended to create a trust over the three policies
2. Whether Mr Lim's conduct was consistent with an express trust in the applicant's favour
3. Whether the trustees' disclaimer of the five valueless policies amounted to recognition of a trust

Holding

The High Court dismissed the application. The applicant had not proved, on a balance of probabilities, the certainty of intention needed for an express trust, so there was no basis for the declarations sought, and the three policies were not shown to be excluded from the bankrupt estate.

Reasoning

Only certainty of intention was disputed. The court cautioned that claims that valuable assets are held on trust, raised after litigation or bankruptcy begins, need careful scrutiny, though late documents are not discounted for their timing alone. It chose not to draw an adverse inference from Mr Lim's failure to give evidence, but the lack of his account and of any factual particulars weakened the claim.

The policy documents named Mr Lim as owner, named no beneficiary and described contracts between him and AIA. Three of the documents relied on were written by or for Mr Lim after Suit 805 began and appeared to be self-interested attempts to ring-fence assets, so the court gave them limited weight. The AIA letter was a bare assertion by a person who gave no evidence and was not shown to understand what a trust meant in law.

Paying premiums was simply Mr Lim's contractual obligation. The claimed transfers to her elder siblings were unsupported, and a moral obligation not to cash in the policies is not a trust. Mr Lim did not transfer the policies when she turned 21 in August 2024 and ignored AIA's June 2024 letters saying he would otherwise remain owner. His explanation of prudence under the Mareva injunction failed because, on her own evidence, he had applied in Suit 805 to transfer other trust accounts to her. This conduct pointed against a trust.

On the five policies, the court found that the applicant herself had proposed taking them over to save time and costs. The trustees' disclaimer reflected only their lack of value to creditors, consistent with the trustees' duty to maximise returns, and was not a concession.

From the judgment