Our Expertise

We acted for a luxury business jet charter company in the purchase and finance of a USD21 million Gulfstream G550 business jet. The client is a fast-rising star in luxury business jet charter.

The Gulfstream jet went on an air operators’ certificate for international charter operations.

[Salem Ibrahim has held a pilot’s license and has been shepherding multi-jurisdictional business jet sale, purchase, financing, leasing and chartering for more than 28 years. He has developed an international network in this field]

Salem Ibrahim was recently instructed as Lead Counsel in a matter involving an experienced Chinese businessman who had invested in a Singapore-incorporated private limited company that promoted Mandarin through educational services. The core issue before the High Court was whether such an implied term, said to be agreed orally, could amount to a legally enforceable guarantee. Mr Salem Ibrahim argued that any such oral promise could not amount to a binding guarantee under Singapore law as it was against section 6(b) of the Civil Law Act 1909, which provides that guarantees must be in writing. The Court agreed and dismissed the claim, finding that the purported implied guarantee was legally untenable.

• Successfully defended a substantial claim for M&E variation works in SIAC Arbitration ARB No. 204 of 2016
• Successfully defended against application to set aside recognition and enforcement of LCIA Award in Singapore.
• Lead counsel in a Singapore building construction dispute arbitrated in Singapore under SIAC rules
• Lead counsel in a Vietnam building construction dispute arbitrated in Singapore under SIAC rules
• Lead counsel for Telekom Italia – successful in LCIA with London seat using UNCITRAL arbitration rules

Written by lead counsel in a $92 million worldwide freezing order — and in the appeals that redefined what family courts can and cannot freeze.

A Mareva injunction — also called a freezing order, asset freezing order, or asset freezing injunction — prevents a spouse from moving, transferring or dissipating assets while divorce proceedings are underway.

Freezing your spouse’s assets before they disappear

When a marriage worth real money breaks down, the first move is not always made in court. It is made at the bank. Assets move — to companies, to trusts, to relatives, to accounts in jurisdictions a family lawyer has to find on a map. By the time the division of matrimonial assets comes before the court, the pool you thought you were dividing may simply no longer be there. The Mareva injunction — a freezing order — exists to stop exactly that. This is how it works in Singapore, when to apply for one, and the mistakes that render it useless.

What a Mareva order actually does

Named after the shipping case that created it, a Mareva injunction restrains a party from dealing with, dissipating or removing assets pending proceedings — in practical terms, it freezes the money in place while the real dispute is decided. In matrimonial cases it is granted against a spouse whose assets are at risk, and in appropriate cases it extends worldwide, catching assets well beyond Singapore. It is not a judgment; it preserves the status quo so that the eventual division divides something that still exists.

When the court will grant one

Freezing orders are not handed out on suspicion alone. A spouse seeking one ordinarily needs to demonstrate a good arguable case on the underlying claim, a real risk that assets will be dissipated or removed if the order is not granted, and fairness in the scope of the order sought. In contested divorces, the risk factor is usually evidenced — transfers already in motion, assets moved shortly after the marriage soured, assets shifted to structures the spouse does not control transparently. Courts move quickly on these applications, often without the other side present, precisely because notice is an invitation to move the money.

Timing: the difference between rescue and salvage

The single most common mistake in high-value divorces is waiting. A freezing order applied for after the assets have left is a salvage operation — disclosure requests, tracing exercises, foreign proceedings, years of work, uncertain recovery. Applied for early, it is a rescue. The practical lesson from the contested cases we handle: the moment a spouse’s behaviour suggests assets are at risk — secret transfers, sudden refusals to disclose, new corporate structures appearing — is the moment to take advice, not the moment the judge raises it.

What supports the freeze

A Mareva order rarely works alone. The supporting toolkit in Singapore matrimonial practice includes disclosure and discovery measures compelling a spouse to reveal what exists and where, orders targeting assets held or received by third parties, and — critically — information orders requiring banks and institutions to reveal the movement of assets. This is also where asset tracing earns its keep: following value through family companies, nominees and offshore trusts to prove where the money really sits, so the freeze grips the right things.

The boundary that decides big-money cases: what a family court cannot freeze

Here is where Singapore law has moved decisively — in the direction that surprises practitioners as often as parties. Assets genuinely belonging to other people — a spouse’s family, a bona fide trust, a company with independent ownership — sit outside the family court’s jurisdiction to bind. In UDA v UDB, the Court of Appeal, a five-judge bench, confirmed that the family court has no power to make orders against third parties, and held that earlier cases granting such orders were wrongly decided. The practical consequence cuts both ways. A spouse cannot have “the family trust” frozen merely by pointing at it — but neither can a wife hide matrimonial wealth behind a third party’s name. The answer is precision: trace the assets, prove who really owns what, and pursue matrimonial property through the correct legal door — the family court for the spouse’s assets, separate High Court routes where third-party structures are being abused.

Distinguishing the genuine trust from the convenient one

Every sophisticated case features the same battleground: the husband asserts the wealth sits in a bona fide trust for relatives; the wife says the trust was conjured for the divorce. Courts scrutinise these assertions closely — how the trust was created, when, by whom, and against the background of the marriage. In one contested case our team handled, the husband claimed portions of the matrimonial wealth were held for family beneficiaries under an “Ancestral Home” agreement; we challenged the assertion in the High Court and obtained orders that no such trust existed. Where a third-party structure is genuine, it is respected — and the division proceeds around it. Where it is camouflage for matrimonial property, competent challenge typically strips it bare.

Putting it together

The playbook in the highest-value Singapore divorces is consistent: move early, freeze first, trace everything, and respect the jurisdictional boundary between the spouse’s assets and everyone else’s. Done in that order, the Mareva order turns a scattering exercise into a preserved pool, and the eventual division divides something real.

This is precisely the terrain we act on as lead counsel: a $92 million worldwide freezing order in a hotly contested matrimonial case, landmark Court of Appeal rulings on what family courts can and cannot bind, and contested asset divisions running to eight figures. Big money or modest means, the same principles apply — only the zeros move.

Related reading: Can the Singapore family court make orders against third parties? The landmark UDA v UDB rulings explained.

Worried your spouse is moving or hiding assets? Speak to our matrimonial team now — timing is everything. Call (65) 6226 1233 or request a callback.

Acted as Lead counsel for certifying Professional Engineer at the Committee of Inquiry which lasted 88 hearing days, involved 14 parties, 173 witnesses and 20 international and local experts in geotechnics, deep tunnelling and finite element analysis. This was a complex public inquiry into the collapse at the MRT Circle Line worksite. There was under design of the diaphragm walls and waler connections in the strutting design as well as safety errors in instrument monitoring and back analyses. A catastrophic collapse ensued and 4 individuals lost their lives.

This was followed by defense as lead counsel in the Health and Safety criminal prosecution and ensuing disciplinary inquiry.

A landmark case. Successfully argued one of the highest mutaah and obtaining 50% for the wife in a high-net-worth case.