3 Siblings in S’pore Fighting Over S$3.1 Million Inheritance Left Behind By Their Parents

Love them or hate them, your siblings are probably the people who you’ve been around the longest aside from your parents.

While forming alliances to steal food from the kitchen or cover up for one another can be some of the highlights of a sibling relationship, there are serious downs to it as well.

Some sibling rivalries may only last for maybe five minutes when they refuse to share toys.

However, some can last forever.

3 Siblings Fighting Over Inheritance

This is the typical Mediacorp or K-drama plot you might see on TV every weeknight, but these things really happen, and they’re more common than you think.

Meet the Lin siblings – 48-year-old Lin Chuanwei, 46-year-old Lin Sihui and 36-year-old Lin Chuanzhi.

As reported by Lianhe Wanbao, their parents have already passed on, with their mother passing away in 2013 and their father in 2019.

However, they left behind some treasure in the form of two properties worth a total of S$3.1 million for their children.

And just like siblings who hate sharing, so did they – so much so that they had to go to court for it.

The inheritance in question is a semi-detached house along Sunrise Avenue, which had been sold for S$1.6 million last year, and a shophouse at Ang Mo Kio worth S$1.5 million.

The court is currently holding two-thirds of the proceeds from the sale of the house as the dispute is still ongoing, while the shophouse is currently being rented out.

Parents Wanted Youngest Son To Have It

One might think that if the parents had chosen who to leave the inheritance to, there wouldn’t be such a dispute, right?

Actually, both parents had written in their individual wills that they would like to bestow the properties upon their youngest son, Lin Chuanzhi.

Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t own the property currently, for their parents were co-owning the properties with the eldest sibling Lin Chuanwei.

The law states that when one of a property’s owners dies, the remaining surviving joint owners automatically hold the rights to it, irregardless of any wills:

“In joint tenancy, the right of survivorship applies. This means that upon the demise of any joint owner, his interest in the flat would automatically be passed on to the remaining co-owners. This is regardless of whether the deceased joint owner has left behind a Will.”

So despite their parents wanting to leave it to the youngest, the eldest still owns it.

The issue stands with the youngest siblings Lin Sihui and Lin Chuanzhi believing that the shophouse and two-thirds of the Sunrise Avenue home should belong to their parents instead.

They brought up the fact that despite Lin Chuanwei helping with the downpayment for the semi-detached house, it was still largely funded by their parents.

Loans for the shophouse were also paid for by their parents, although Lin Chuanwei was made a co-owner of it.

Claims He Was Their Parents’ Favourite

When you can’t win in an argument, just play the favourites card, anyone who’s ever had siblings will tell you.

Lin Chuanwei stated that he was their parents’ “favourite” all along, all because he had good grades and was a graduate of the University of Cambridge.

The will suggests otherwise, but alright.

His younger siblings countered that he was made a co-owner of the properties as they wanted to get a longer loan repayment period.

Once he turned 21, their parents made him a co-owner of the shophouse, and also of the semi-detached house when they purchased it five years later in 1999.

The middle sibling, daughter Lin Sihui, was apparently not considered for being a co-owner as she was about to get married and purchase her own home soon, they said.

Trials were expected to continue on 7 July after having one last week as well.

Guess their parents failed to foresee that their children would be fighting this hard for their inheritance instead of coming together, sadly.

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