Brothers left out of mum’s will to get $300,000 each from $5m house sale, court rules; ICA foils bid to smuggle replica guns, BB pellets into Singapore via cargo container: Singapore live news

When the mother died in 2012, she left her Eng Kong Road semi-detached house to two of her sons, David and Franklin Chan Yip Tong, reports Channel News Asia. Their brothers George and Jack got nothing, and family relations became strained. In 2018, their uncle proposed the payout as a peace offering, and the brothers agreed verbally.

The house sold for $5 million in 2022, after David made Franklin sign a note agreeing to the payment. Franklin disowned the note a day later, saying he had signed it under duress, and $600,000 has sat in a joint account ever since. On 19 Oct, Justice Christopher Tan ruled that the note was a binding contract.

He pointed to a message in which Franklin said he had found a “sucker” willing to pay above the $4.5 million bank valuation. The judge found that Franklin had accepted a “haircut” to get the sale through. “The defendant should not be allowed to now raise the doctrine of economic duress to wriggle out of keeping to his word,” he said.

The judgment also settled a string of other disputes, from unpaid rent to a blue attaché case of their mother’s valuables. The full story via CNA, in the above link.