Do I need to refund my ex-spouse's CPF account if I take over the property?
If you take over a property from your ex-spouse, he/she will have to refund the CPF principal amount withdrawn for the property, along with the accrued interest, when he/she is no longer the owner of the property.
However, the CPF laws were revised from 1 October 2007 to allow for more flexibility in such cases. The Court can now make an order for the property to be transferred from a member to his/her ex-spouse without requiring the full CPF refund to be made into the member's CPF account.
Should the ex-spouse sell the property, he/she is required to refund into his/her own CPF account the amount withdrawn from the member's CPF account (which were not refunded upon transfer) as well as the principal amount withdrawn from his/her own CPF account for the purchase of the property with accrued interest.
It would be for the Court to decide whether court orders extracted before 1 October 2007 could be amended or varied to benefit from the existing CPF laws. In this respect, please consult your lawyers.
