Victoria Meets Confucius in Singapore PDF Download

Author: Kelvin F.K. Low
Publisher:
ISBN:
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Languages : en
Pages : 23

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Book Description
Co-ownership of residential property is commonplace in Singapore. This is the result both of necessity (as private property is expensive) and incentives (generous subsidies are made available to family units purchasing public property). Yet the rules on implied trusts (both resulting and constructive) governing such ownership have resisted developments seen in other common law jurisdictions such as England and Australia or even Hong Kong. This has led to criticisms that the rules perpetrate gender inequality. This may strike observers as odd given the progressive views on gender of the Singapore government, as can be seen in in its enactment of the Women's Charter as early as in 1961. It is less odd, however, when viewed from the conservative Confucian perspective of the family as the basic unit of society. The cases therefore demonstrate not so much an objective of marginalising women but of preserving the especial place of the family, conceived of as a man and a woman in a formal State-recognised marriage, values conveniently found in some of the Victorian laws inherited by Singapore as a former British colony. Developments in trust law that threaten the hallowed status of the formally State-recognised family unit are viewed by the courts with suspicion and trepidation. This paper considers if this apprehension continues to be viable in the face of a changing society.