The claimant’s case was that everything he spent on his partner before the relationship began was a gift, and that everything after it began was a loan. The Singapore High Court found that position contrary to common sense, held the sums were gifts, and dismissed the claim with costs.
Singapore: The General Division of the High Court of Singapore has dismissed a claim by Chander Agarwal, Managing Director of the NSE and BSE listed logistics company TCI Express Limited, seeking to recover S$468,090, roughly Rs 3.5 crore, which he said he had spent on his former partner during their relationship, holding that the sums were gifts and not interest-free loans [Chander Agarwal v. Lee Xiu Hui Felicia].
Senior Judge Lee Seiu Kin rejected the claim in its entirety, together with alternative claims in misrepresentation, unjust enrichment and constructive trust, and ordered the claimant to pay the defendant’s costs.
The background
The parties met on a flight in 2019, when the defendant was working as a flight attendant. They began a romantic relationship in September 2022, which ended in December 2023. The claim was filed in March 2024.
The claimant contended that the defendant had requested a series of interest-free loans over the course of the relationship, totalling S$468,090. The heads of claim included personal expenses charged to three of his credit cards, life insurance premiums, repayment of a debt owed to her former employer, engagement of a feng shui master for her flat, first class air tickets and shopping expenses on trips to the United States and Hong Kong, the incorporation of her company, and fees for an executive programme run jointly by Stanford and the National University of Singapore.
The defendant’s case was that these were gifts made out of love and affection.
The legal test
The Court applied the settled position from the Singapore Court of Appeal’s decision in Toh Eng Tiah v. Jiang Angelina, under which a valid gift inter vivos requires an intention to gift and delivery of the subject matter, assessed by reference to the subjective intention of the donor at the time of transfer. Crucially:
“…once a donor has made a gift, he or she cannot resile from his or her position and convert the gift into a loan… once there is a gift, the donor parts fully with the property and, having no title to the property, he cannot then convert it into a loan.”
The question, therefore, was the claimant’s intention at the time each sum was given.
Three observations that framed the case
Before turning to the individual heads, the Judge made three observations.
The first was evidentiary. Apart from one handwritten document, the claimant could point to nothing showing that the defendant had ever requested the sums as loans or agreed to repay them. He testified that conversations about finances were always verbal. The Court observed that while informality between romantic partners is not unusual, it was telling that in a relationship conducted substantially over WhatsApp he could not produce a single message in which she acknowledged receiving a loan. The pleaded figures were also approximate, and in cross-examination the claimant conceded that he had abandoned all claims for 2022 and that his documents supported far less than he claimed. On one head pleaded at S$151,658, his counsel confirmed the actual spending was S$61,108.61 and the claimant accepted his documents supported S$46,396.29.
The second concerned conduct before the relationship. The Court set out a pattern of lavish gifts predating September 2022, which the claimant accepted formed no part of his claim, and recorded exchanges in which the defendant expressed discomfort at the sums being spent on her and the claimant reassured her. In one message she asked how she could repay him. His reply, as recorded in the judgment, was that there was no need and that he was not a money lender. In another he told her not to be shy about using his money and proposed a monthly budget for her taxi, dining and beauty expenses.
The third was the claimant’s evidence at trial, which the Judge described as illogical and often evasive.
The acceptance theory
The position the claimant maintained under cross-examination became the centre of the judgment. He accepted that before the parties began dating everything he spent was a gift, and said that from the moment the relationship started everything became a loan and everything became transactional.
He further accepted that where he offered something and she accepted it, that acceptance amounted to her requesting an interest-free loan, and that this was so even though he had never told her beforehand that it was a loan or that there would be a repayment date.
“With respect, these positions are contrary to common sense and unsustainable. They are likely the Claimant’s attempts to evade the cross-examiner’s questions when confronted with unfavourable evidence, such as his repeated offers to spend for the Defendant’s benefit and assurances that she did not need to repay him.”
Going head by head, the Court found the same pattern throughout: it was the claimant who offered, often pressed, and who told her there was no budget and that she should spend on herself. On the executive programme fees, it rejected the argument that money spent on a partner’s professional advancement could not be a gift, and held that the claimant having borrowed from his own company to fund it went to his source of financing rather than his donative intent.
The handwritten document
The claimant confirmed at trial that his claims rested solely and purely on a handwritten note said to have been initialled by the defendant, in which she supposedly acknowledged taking a monthly deposit of S$10,000 to S$25,000 belonging to him, which she would not use and would return on demand. The defendant denied signing or even seeing it before the proceedings.
The Court found the circumstances of its production suspect. Although the claim was said to rest entirely on that document, the original Statement of Claim made no reference to it and instead stated that he had never insisted on a formal written agreement. It surfaced only in an amended pleading seven months later.
On its contents, the Court noted that the note referred to no head of claim, that the defendant had plainly not taken a fixed monthly sum, and that the document’s terms, under which she could not use the money at all, contradicted the claimant’s own case that she could use it but had to repay it.
The handwriting expert jointly appointed by the parties had opined that the signature was genuine. The Court attached limited weight to that opinion for two reasons. The expert had conducted only a pictorial analysis of the body of the document and accepted he could not exclude the possibility that the body and the signature were written by the same person, which, given the claimant’s evidence that he had written the body, left open the possibility that he had written the signature too. Second, every specimen signature ended in an upward stroke while the disputed signature ended downwards, a difference the expert accepted was a common characteristic and had not recorded in his report. In those circumstances it was unsafe to conclude the document had been signed by the defendant.
In any event, the defendant produced a later promissory note of May 2023 signed by the claimant, in which he undertook never to ask her to return her car or any item given out of his own goodwill and generosity. The claimant made no submission on it. The Court held that even if the earlier document had been signed and binding, it had been superseded.
The alternative claims
The misrepresentation claim, in deceit and under the Misrepresentation Act, rested on two alleged representations, that the relationship was genuine and exclusive and that the defendant had funds and would repay. Both failed, the Court finding the representations were not made and, in any event, not relied upon.
The unjust enrichment claim failed on the unjust factor. Failure of basis requires a joint understanding that the recipient’s right to retain the benefit is conditional. Having found the sums were intended as gifts, the Court held the bases contended for were not joint understandings at all.
The constructive trust claim failed because no recognised category of unconscionability was engaged. The claimant cited no authority, and on the findings made it was he who had constantly encouraged the defendant to use his money, so no scheme of financial exploitation could be said to exist.
The closing passage
The Judge’s concluding paragraph recorded that the claimant, a man of ample means and expensive tastes, had showered the defendant with gifts, that she had expressed awe and occasional reluctance before accepting them, and that when the relationship ended badly he had become embittered. He then quoted William Congreve’s lines on love turned to hatred and a woman scorned, adding:
“This case shows that such emotion is not the sole province of one gender.”
Why it matters
The principle applied is not peculiar to Singapore. Indian law reaches the same place by a different route. Under Section 122 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 a gift is a voluntary transfer made without consideration, and once accepted it is complete; Section 126 permits revocation only on an agreed contingency or on grounds that would void a contract, and expressly not at the mere will of the donor. A party asserting that money handed over was a loan rather than a gift carries the burden of proving it, and in the absence of a written acknowledgement that burden is a real one.
What makes this judgment useful is its treatment of intention in intimate relationships. Money moves constantly between partners without documentation, and the temptation after a breakup is to recharacterise it. The Court’s answer is that intention is assessed at the moment of transfer and cannot be revisited afterwards, and that where the transferor was the one pressing the money on the recipient and telling her he was not a money lender, no amount of subsequent litigation converts what happened into a loan.
The evidentiary lesson is equally plain. A claim of this size, brought by a sophisticated commercial party, collapsed largely because the figures were pleaded as approximations, were conceded in cross-examination to be unsupported, and rested on a single document that appeared only in an amended pleading. Courts assessing informal dealings between partners will look for contemporaneous material, and in a WhatsApp-era relationship its absence is itself telling.
Case Title: Chander Agarwal v. Lee Xiu Hui Felicia [2026] SGHC 185, Originating Claim No 138 of 2024
Bench: Senior Judge Lee Seiu Kin, General Division of the High Court of the Republic of Singapore
Date of Judgment: September 9, 2026
Appearances: Mohamed Baiross and Sharifah Nabilah binte Syed Omar (I.R.B Law LLP) for the claimant. Sunil Singh Panoo and Jasjeet Singh s/o Harjindar Singh (Dhillon & Panoo LLC) for the defendant.