Soh Chan Soon v Tan Choon Yock

JudgeWarren Khoo L H J
Judgment Date17 June 1998
Neutral Citation[1998] SGHC 204
Citation[1998] SGHC 204
CourtHigh Court (Singapore)
Plaintiff CounselTan Siah Yong
Defendant CounselGill Z S
Published date28 March 2013

Judgment:

GROUNDS OF DECISION

1. This is an appeal against the learned district judge Laura Lau’s decision on the division of matrimonial assets following a divorce.

2. The parties got married in 1970. It was a long marriage, but almost never a happy one. The wife’s petition for

divorce was on the ground of the husband’s unreasonable behaviour - habitual gambling, constant borrowings from relatives and friends, the wife having to repay his debts, harassment by loan sharks and so on. There are three children, all born in the early years of the marriage. They are now all adults, two girls aged 26 and 25, and a son aged 21. The son is a student at university.

3. The matrimonial assets available for distribution in this case consists only of one HDB flat. The learned district judge went meticulously into the arithmetics to ascertain how much each party had contributed in monetary terms to the acquisition of the property. She came to the figures of 66.2% and 33.8% as the respective financial contributions of the husband and the wife. The learned district judge then referred to the principles laid down by the Court of Appeal in the case of Ng Hwee Keng v. Chia Soon Hin [1995] 2 SLR 231. She found that the wife had made very significant contributions in holding the family together in very difficult circumstances, particularly during the early years of the marriage. The husband was what one might call an adult delinquent. In 1972, he was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment for theft when the eldest child was barely a year old. Even when not in prison, he did not provide adequately for the family, and the wife had to go out and work when the child was only 3 years old. At times, she had to hold down two jobs. The learned district judge took into account the fact that the two younger children were still living with the wife. She gave the wife a 63% share in the equity of the flat, with an option to the wife of taking over the husband’s share by paying him 37% of the net value. The husband says that it was wrong for the learned district judge to give the wife such a large share. He says it would be more equitable to divide the net value half and half.

Principles of division

4. Division of matrimonial assets is not a science. It is a judicial attempt to divide what was never intended to be divided in the first place. The legislature and the courts have formulated general guidelines, but it is possible for two judges each doing his or her honest best to come to two significantly different results. An appeal court should not interfere with the decision of the court of first instance unless it is so far out of line as to be perverse, or unless the lower court has clearly gone wrong on...

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17 cases
  • NK v NL
    • Singapore
    • Court of Appeal (Singapore)
    • 19 July 2007
    ...we are unable to agree. The traditional approach was considered in the Singapore High Court decision of Soh Chan Soon v Tan Choon Yock [1998] SGHC 204 by Warren L H Khoo J, who interpreted direct financial contributions as only one factor amidst the multifarious factors for consideration (a......
  • Lock Yeng Fun v Chua Hock Chye
    • Singapore
    • Court of Appeal (Singapore)
    • 26 June 2007
    ...[2007] 1 SLR 75 (folld) Ryan Neil John v Berger Rosaline [2000] 3 SLR (R) 647; [2001] 1 SLR 419 (folld) Soh Chan Soon v Tan Choon Yock [1998] SGHC 204 (refd) White v White [2001] 1 AC 596 (refd) Yow Mee Lan v Chen Kai Buan [2000] 2 SLR (R) 659; [2000] 4 SLR 466 (folld) Women's Charter (Cap ......
  • Chan Tin Sun v Fong Quay Sim
    • Singapore
    • High Court (Singapore)
    • 12 May 2014
    ...these facts will typically not be borne out by contemporaneous records, as underscored by the court in Soh Chan Soon v Tan Choon Yock[1998] SGHC 204 at [6] (cited by this court in NK v NL, as quoted above at [8] of this judgment). The broad-based approach also avoids what this court has des......
  • Chan Tin Sun v Fong Quay Sim
    • Singapore
    • High Court (Singapore)
    • 12 May 2014
    ...these facts will typically not be borne out by contemporaneous records, as underscored by the court in Soh Chan Soon v Tan Choon Yock [1998] SGHC 204 at [6] (cited by this court in NK v NL, as quoted above at [8] of this judgment). The broad-based approach also avoids what this court has de......
  • Request a trial to view additional results
1 books & journal articles
  • Family Law
    • Singapore
    • Singapore Academy of Law Annual Review No. 2007, December 2007
    • 1 December 2007
    ...presumption is not rebutted, equality is the resulting end-point proportion of division. This was used in Soh Chan Soon v Tan Choon Yock[1998] SGHC 204 (‘Soh’) and Louis Pius Gilbert v Louis Anne Lise[2000] 1 SLR 274. This approach stood in contrast with that in Yow Mee Lan v Chen Kai Buan[......

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