Conveyancing | Lush Dream Home

ALL payments for property deals will in future be held by the Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) or commercial banks, and not law firms.

General details of how this will work were released by the Law Ministry yesterday as it sought public feedback on a final solution to the longstanding problem of lawyers running off with their clients’ money.

In the last five years, rogue lawyers have absconded with almost $20 million in funds meant for property transactions, and held in client accounts in law firms.

The Law Ministry’s proposals were sparked by the need to protect monies entrusted to lawyers by buyers and sellers of properties.

For instance in 2007, a 47-year-old woman who sold her property for $740,000 and hoped to use the gains of $200,000 to get out of bankruptcy, came to grief when the lawyer she hired, Zulkifli Amin, skipped town with her Continue reading →

Lawyers may stop holding conveyancing monies

Posted on 12 Aug 2009 | Comments Off

Govt suggests that such funds be held by Law Academy or banks

LAWYERS may soon be prohibited from holding conveyancing monies if a new proposal by the Ministry of Law goes through.

This follows the infamous case of lawyer David Rasif running off with some $10 million of his clients’ money in 2006, as well as a string of recent cases in which lawyers absconded with clients’ conveyancing money.

Aimed at preventing lawyers from holding large sums of cash for their clients, the new move is unlikely to dampen business in this area of legal work, market watchers said.

Conveyancing money refers to money used as part of transactions for housing purchases. This includes stamp duty payment and option deposits.

A seller receives an option deposit – typically amounting to 4 or 9 per cent of the purchase price which a buyer pays – once the option to purchase Continue reading →