Loh Swee Peng v Chan Kui Kok

JurisdictionSingapore
JudgeVinodh Coomaraswamy J
Judgment Date10 March 2015
Neutral Citation[2015] SGHC 64
Plaintiff CounselGoh Siok Leng (Christina Goh & Co)
Docket NumberDivorce Transfer No 502 of 2011
Date10 March 2015
Hearing Date29 September 2014,15 September 2014
Subject MatterMaintenance,Matrimonial assets,Family law,Wife,Division
Year2015
Citation[2015] SGHC 64
Defendant CounselJeanny Ng (Jeanny Ng)
CourtHigh Court (Singapore)
Published date18 March 2015
Vinodh Coomaraswamy J: Introduction

The parties to these proceedings are husband and wife. They married in 1971. There are four children of the marriage. Each of the children achieved adulthood and economic independence from their parents long ago. No questions of custody or maintenance for the children therefore arise.

The wife petitioned for divorce in 2011 on the basis of the husband’s unreasonable behaviour. The husband initially opposed the divorce but he eventually withdrew his objections after the plaintiff amended her statement of particulars in 2012. Interim judgment was granted uncontested a few months later in 2012.1 The application before me concerns the division of the matrimonial assets and maintenance for the wife.

It is common ground that the matrimonial assets comprise the following: Assets in joint names: A 4-room HDB flat in Serangoon. This is the matrimonial home. This property is by now unencumbered. The wife values it at $400,0002 while the husband values it at $445,000.3 A shop unit in Lucky Plaza. This property too is by now unencumbered. The market value of the Lucky Plaza property assessed as at 1 April 2014 is $2.05m.4 A joint current account at OCBC with a credit balance of just under $83,000. The rent from the Lucky Plaza property is paid into this account. Assets in the wife’s sole name: Just under $20,000 in all the sub-accounts of her CPF account. An AIA life insurance policy with a surrender value of just under $45,000 which pays $7,500 every 5 years. Just over $130,000 in two current accounts with OCBC. Assets in the husband’s sole name: Just under $26,000 in all the sub-accounts of his CPF account. An NTUC Income Insurance Policy with a surrender value of about $60,000. A little under $2,000 in a UOB savings account. A little over $800 in a POSB account.

The net value of the matrimonial assets is in excess of $2.5m.5 Almost all of that value is represented by real property. The wife seeks four orders from me: (i) an equal division of the real property; (ii) a fair division of the money in the couple’s joint current account; (iii) an order that each spouse retain the matrimonial assets held in his or her sole name; and (iv) maintenance of $500 per month.6 The husband seeks a 65:35 division of the matrimonial assets and offers nothing to the wife by way of maintenance.7

Having heard submissions, I order8 that the real property be sold on the open market with the net proceeds being divided equally between each spouse, subject to each spouse having an option to buy out the other spouse’s half-interest. I further order that the money in the couple’s joint bank account at OCBC be divided equally between them and that they each retain the assets held in their individual names. I decline to award the wife any maintenance, but make a nominal award to accommodate a future application for maintenance by the wife if circumstances change.

I now set out the grounds for my decision.

The history of the marriage

The husband and wife married on 30 December 1971. They underwent a customary marriage ceremony on 2 June 1972.9 The wife is now 65 and the husband is 67. There are four children of the marriage, born in 1973, 1975, 1976 and 1986. The children range in age from 41 to 28 years of age.

It was only after their customary marriage in 1972 that the couple began to live together. They lived together initially with the husband’s parents for six months. They then lived in a succession of rented accommodation from 1972 to 1978.

The wife was earning her own income even before the marriage.10 She trained as a tailor and ran her own dress-making business from home. After the marriage, she continued to run her business from home and to earn an income.11 She designed and tailored bespoke12 dresses for her customers, doing the work either herself or with the assistance of seamstresses.13 Her business, by all accounts, enjoyed a modicum of success. She also applied her skills to sewing clothes for the husband and their children.14

The matrimonial home

In 1978, the couple bought their first flat. It was in Ang Mo Kio.15 The purchase price was $24,500.16 The husband paid $16,000 towards the purchase price from his CPF account and arranged a loan from the HDB for the balance.17 He also asserts that he alone paid the monthly instalments, either through his CPF account or in cash.18 The wife, however, asserts that she contributed financially towards the purchase of this flat and towards the loan taken to pay for renovations to the flat.19 In particular, she alleges that she made a capital repayment of $9,000 in 1980 or 1981 out of her lottery winnings.20 It is not necessary for me to reach this far back into history and make any findings on these disputes.

The loan on the Ang Mo Kio property was fully repaid by 1981 at the latest. Also in 1981, the husband started his own renovation business.21

In or about 1999, the couple sold their flat in Ang Mo Kio. There is conflicting evidence about the sale price, with the husband asserting in one of his early affidavits that it was sold for $255,00022 but asserting in a later affidavit that it was sold for $330,000.23 Again, it is not necessary for me to resolve this conflict in his evidence. The couple lived with the wife’s brother while waiting for their new matrimonial home in Serangoon to be ready.24 The Serangoon property continues to be their matrimonial home to this day. It is one of the properties which I have to divide.

The purchase price of the Serangoon property was $231,000. The stamp duty and legal fees came to just under $3,900. The husband’s direct contributions towards acquiring the Serangoon property were just under $57,000, comprising $53,10025 from his CPF account plus the transaction costs of about $3,900. The wife’s direct contribution was just under $12,000 from her CPF account. The remainder of the purchase price was financed by a loan of about $160,000.26

The husband submits that wife’s direct contributions towards the Serangoon flat from her CPF account should be attributed to him because she earned those CPF contributions as an employee of his renovation business. His position, therefore, is that he generated all the money which went into her CPF account. I reject that submission. While the ultimate source of the money may have been the husband’s renovation business and his efforts in that regard, the CPF contributions became the wife’s property once they were credited to her CPF account. That is so even if she in fact rendered no services to the renovation business but was registered as its employee purely to permit him to hire more foreign labour, as was suggested. The money in her CPF account was her money which she chose to commit to the Serangoon property. I therefore attribute this sum of just under $12,000 wholly to the wife.

The couple did some renovations before moving into the Serangoon property. The wife’s account is that she took a loan of $20,000 to pay for the renovations and repaid the loan in full at the rate of $500 per month.27 The husband’s account is that all the renovations were done by his renovation business funded by a loan of $30,000. When that money ran out, the husband’s renovation business purchased the necessary remaining materials and carried out the remaining work without payment. He values that remaining work at $20,000 and claims credit for it.28

I give credit to each spouse for a $20,000 contribution towards the renovations. The wife has not produced evidence to corroborate her oral evidence that she took and repaid the loan of $20,000. But the husband has adduced evidence that a renovation loan of $30,000 was taken against the security of the Lucky Plaza property to pay in part for the renovations.29 The husband does not in his calculation claim credit for repayment of that loan. That suggests to me that he implicitly accepts that the wife repaid the loan. There is, however, a conflict of evidence as to the quantum of the loan. The husband says the loan amount was $30,000 and that the monthly repayment was $504.30.30 The wife says she repaid $20,000 at $500 per month.31 I cannot, however, give the wife credit for more than she claims. I therefore adopt the wife’s figure and credit to her the sum of $20,000 as part of her direct contributions to the acquisition of the Serangoon property.

I therefore calculate each spouse’s direct contributions to the Serangoon property as follows:

Wife Husband
Payment from CPF $11,600.00 $53,100.00
Initial cash payment Nil Nil
Stamp duty and legal fees Nil $3,893.67
Payment towards renovation $20,000.00 $20,000.00
Total $31,600.00 $76,993.67
Percent contribution 29.1% 70.9%

From 1999 to 2001, the wife paid the monthly instalments towards the loan on the Serangoon property out of the profits of her boutique.32 From 2001 to 2013, the monthly instalments were paid out of the rent which the couple earned on the Lucky Plaza property.33 I have left these sums out of account in the above calculation, but bring them into account as a factor in the broad-brush approach I apply at [44] below. The loan on the Serangoon property was fully repaid by 2013.34

The Lucky Plaza property

From 1972 to 1979, the wife’s dressmaking business grew. In 1979 she registered it as a sole proprietorship and opened a boutique in rented premises at People’s Park Centre.35 She moved the boutique to Lucky Plaza in 1982 or 1983. In 1988, the boutique moved again, to a different rented unit within Lucky Plaza.36

In 1992, the opportunity arose for the couple to purchase the Lucky Plaza unit at which the boutique was operating from its landlord.37 They did so at a price of $410,000. The idea of purchasing the Lucky Plaza property...

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3 cases
  • Goh Keng Boey v Ong Jim Hwee
    • Singapore
    • Family Court (Singapore)
    • 28 Mayo 2015
    ...order an equal division: see recent High Court cases such as Chan Yuen Boey v Sia Hee Soon [2012] SGHC 92; Loh Swee Peng v Chan Kui Kock [2015] SGHC 64; Wong Sook Kuen v Loh Choon Fah [2015] SGHC 36; and Dong Jianrong v Hiang Huahuo [2015] SGHC 56. I find the division justified in this part......
  • Uyp v Uyq
    • Singapore
    • High Court (Singapore)
    • 15 Julio 2019
    ...BUX v BUY [2019] SGHCF 4 (refd) Lock Yeng Fun v Chua Hock Chye [2007] 3 SLR(R) 520; [2007] 3 SLR 520 (folld) Loh Swee Peng v Chan Kui Kok [2015] 3 SLR 1 (folld) NK v NL [2007] 3 SLR(R) 743; [2007] 3 SLR 743 (folld) TNC v TND [2016] 3 SLR 1172 (refd) TNL v TNK [2017] 1 SLR 609 (folld) TXW v ......
  • TBM v TBN
    • Singapore
    • Family Court (Singapore)
    • 10 Abril 2015
    ...arriving at a just and equitable division.” (Yeo Chong Lin v Tay Ang Choo Nancy [2011] 2 SLR 1157). See also Loh Swee Peng v Chan Kui Kok [2015] SGHC 64 where the High Court summarised the principles for division as restated by the Court of Appeal in BCB v BCC [2013] 2 SLR 324. Matrimonial ......
2 books & journal articles
  • Family Law
    • Singapore
    • Singapore Academy of Law Annual Review No. 2015, December 2015
    • 1 Diciembre 2015
    ...SGDC 179 at [7]; Goh Ah Hwa v Lim Boon Kang[2014] SGDC 191 at [7]; ARL v ARM (above, para 16.52) at [52]; and Loh Swee Peng v Chan Kui Kok[2015] 3 SLR 1 at [53]. The point that is being made here is that whether a wife is financially independent or not or whether she still has many working ......
  • Family Law
    • Singapore
    • Singapore Academy of Law Annual Review No. 2019, December 2019
    • 1 Diciembre 2019
    ...at [44] and [45]. 62 ANJ v ANK [2015] 4 SLR 1043 at [30]. 63 UYP v UYQ [2019] SGHCF 16 at [48]. 64 BPC v BPB [2019] 1 SLR 608 at [49]. 65 [2015] 3 SLR 1. 66 Loh Swee Peng v Chan Kui Kok [2015] 3 SLR 1 at [33]. 67 Loh Swee Peng v Chan Kui Kok [2015] 3 SLR 1 at [33]. 68 See para 16.28 above. ......

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