Rastam Singa & Co.

On the court record

Rastam Singa & Co. is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) span strata property, land, contract and family law. In the strata field it has appeared in an application to set aside enforcement notices issued against registered proprietors of condominium units who had carried out internal renovations, adding rooms for the purpose of subletting, testing the validity of the management body's enforcement action. In the land field it has appeared, for the respondent, in appeals over whether sale and purchase transactions were sham transactions disguising illegal moneylending, and whether it is appropriate for the court to scrutinise the documents and transactions where illegal moneylending is alleged.

The firm's property and family practice is illustrated by a matter in which a vendor had signed a sale and purchase agreement, a power of attorney and a trust deed and received the full purchase price, yet claimed to have intended only to take a loan and to have laboured under the impression that the documents concerned a loan, raising the effect of executed conveyancing documents against a plea of mistake. On the family side the firm has appeared in divorce petitions and cross-petitions, including matters where the parties agreed to dissolve the marriage and the contest concerned custody, care and control of the children and ancillary relief.

In the divorce matters the firm gave close attention to the arrangements for the children's care and to the equitable division of the parties' assets, reflecting the individualised approach that matrimonial litigation demands of counsel on both sides. The reported profile is that of a general litigation practice moving between strata enforcement and management, the recurring problem of sham sale agreements masking moneylending, the conveyancing and mistake questions that arise in property transfers, and matrimonial disputes over divorce and the welfare of children, serving both commercial and individual clients across the civil courts.