AMW v AMZ

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Woo Bih Li J
• Judgment Date: 07 April 2011
• Neutral Citation: [2011] SGHC 83
• Date: 07 April 2011
• Docket Number: Divorce No 438 of 2009 (Registrar’s Appeal No 141 of 2010
• Published date: 07 April 2011
• Plaintiff Counsel: Lim Hee Thuang Louis (William Poh & Louis Lim)
• Hearing Date: 24 November 2010,28 January 2011,22 March 2011
• Defendant Counsel: Jeanne Wu (R Ramason & Almenoar)
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Subject Matter: Maintenance,Family Law

Woo Bih Li J: Introduction

This appeal arises from a matrimonial dispute. The wife appealed against a decision of a district judge on ancillary matters. The appeal covered issues of custody, access, maintenance and division of matrimonial assets.

I am setting out my reasons in respect of my decision on maintenance as it involves the general question as to when an order for maintenance should take effect.

The district judge made her decision on 6 August 2010. She ordered the husband to pay $400 a month as maintenance for two young children of the marriage. The maintenance order was to take effect from 1 August 2010.

The wife’s appeal sought an order that the maintenance for the children commence from 6 August 2008 instead as that was two years before the date of the district judge’s decision.

The district judge’s grounds of decision states, at [32], that:

... I note that an application for backdated maintenance was not raised at the hearing. I would not have granted such an application either, as the wife had not sought interim maintenance nor made any maintenance application prior to the ancillary matters hearings. There would have been no basis to grant this.

Apparently, another district judge had expressed a similar view in [28] of ZG v ZH [2008] SGDC 293 stating that it is the usual practice of the court not to backdate a maintenance order unless there are good reasons to do so. It was not clear from that decision whether an intention to save the costs of an application for interim maintenance would be considered a good reason.

On the other hand, in TG v TH [2007] SGDC 172, a district court did backdate the maintenance to start from the month in which the divorce petition was filed as the wife’s reason for not applying for interim maintenance was to save costs (see [43] of that decision). Even then, the maintenance which was backdated to the date when the divorce petition was filed was for a smaller sum than the current maintenance ordered in that decision.

Before I continue, I should mention that in the past, an applicant seeking to dissolve a marriage had to file a divorce petition. Nowadays, a writ of summons is filed instead.

In the first place, I do not see why a court should use the date of the decision on ancillaries as a reference point to determine when a person should start being liable for maintenance. In the absence of a claim for interim maintenance, a claim for maintenance will usually arise when or after a writ is filed for the dissolution of a marriage. Quite often, the dissolution of a marriage is dealt...