TAG v TAH

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Kathryn Thong
• Judgment Date: 16 March 2021
• Neutral Citation: [2021] SGFC 26
• Court: Family Court (Singapore)
• Hearing Date: 23 October 2020,20 October 2020
• Docket Number: D 6060/2010
• Plaintiff Counsel: Plaintiff (in person)
• Defendant Counsel: Satwant Singh s/o Sarban Singh (Satwant & Associates)
• Subject Matter: Family law,Relocation
• Published date: 30 March 2021

District Judge Kathryn Thong: Introduction

This was the Mother’s application to relocate to Luxembourg with parties’ only child whom I shall refer to as ‘Dilan’. Dilan was 12 years old at the time of the hearing, and had already completed his Primary School Leaving Examination (“PSLE”).

The Mother’s relocation was motivated by her job loss in Singapore. As an IT consultant, her training was in a specific software which was no longer required in Singapore but for which, her prospective employer in Luxembourg valued.

Apart from the relocation, the Mother also prayed for the monthly child maintenance to be increased from $1,000 to $4,000 or alternatively, a lump sum be paid.

The Father initially agreed to the relocation but changed his mind when the Mother insisted that he should continue to maintain their son. He then took out a cross-summons to reverse care and control to him and for the monthly maintenance to be reduced from $1,000 to $300.

In resisting her application, the Father submitted that the Mother was unsuitable to have care and control of Dilan, as she had clearly not raised him well. Amongst other things, he took issue with his son’s lacklustre academic performance, inability to speak Hindi fluently and overall physical fitness.

I eventually dismissed the Father’s application to reverse care and control to him, granted the Mother’s relocation application and reduced the monthly child maintenance to $650.

I had found that there was no material change in circumstances to alter the status quo in the care and control arrangements, nor had the Father demonstrated that it would be in Dilan’s best interests to be in his care.

As for the maintenance, the Mother had provided no objective basis for the staggering increment to $4,000 and I was of the view that a ballpark figure of $650 would suffice given that education was subsidised in Luxembourg, and pertinently, her financial circumstances had improved since the award of child maintenance was first made in 2014. Besides, Dilan had not yet moved to Luxembourg and any estimate of his expenses would largely be speculative.

I also made orders on other miscellaneous prayers in the Father’s summons.

Both parties have appealed against my decision.

Background facts

Both parties are Singapore Permanent Residents, and Dilan is an Indian citizen. The parents were married in 2007 and interim judgment was granted in 2012. Yet, the ancillary matters took some four years to conclude. In TAG v TAH [2015] SGDC 25, the learned District Judge Sharon Lim (“DJ Lim”) who presided over the ancillary matters observed at [7]: The divorce proceedings have taken more than 4 years thus far due to the parties’ entrenched positions and highly litigious approach. The issue of whether the divorce should be granted at all was hotly contested, alongside all related issues of jurisdiction, maintenance, family violence and other applications. The ancillary matters were likewise heatedly contested.

DJ Lim observed the following at [13] of her grounds: For most of [Dilan’s] life, he has lived solely with his mother with unfortunately little contact with his father. Without going into attributing whose fault it was for the limited contact with the father, it patently clear to me that it would not be in the child’s welfare to uproot him from a living arrangement he has been used to for some time and place him in a new home, as the husband is submitting. In my view, the more critical step to take was to first facilitate the re-establishment of the bond between the husband and the child. In the meantime, the child should remain under the care of the wife, which is the arrangement he is used to. I agreed with the wife’s counsel that this would ensure stability for the child given his young age. However, the wife also had to realise that it was in the child’s best interests to have a good parental relationship with the husband as well and facilitate regular access. [own emphasis]

Some five years on after the ancillary matters had concluded, it appeared that little had changed between parties, with the Father complaining of difficulties with seeing Dilan despite living a 10 minutes’ walking distance from him.

Parties’ respective cases

The Mother explained that her relocation was for genuine reasons. It was in Dilan’s best interests as she could no longer find a job in Singapore and the Luxembourg job offer would provide her and Dilan financial security, especially when she had had to repeatedly take out enforcement applications against the Father for defaulting on maintenance.

She had been previously working as an ‘application support’ for software used in private equity and alternative investments. The software was used mainly in Europe and the US, but rarely in Asia and her training was so specialised she had to travel to Switzerland for a 3-month training programme.

Unfortunately, the company migrated to a new software and in May 2020 her contract was no longer renewed. She thus lost her gross income of $7,500 though she received her performance bonus in June 2020, as well as her cash in lieu of outstanding leave.

Since March 2020, being aware of her impending departure from her company, she had been searching for jobs and the Mother exhibited her various job applications in her affidavit. Unfortunately, her efforts were futile until she was headhunted for the prospective role in Luxembourg.

This was a very attractive job offer with 35.5 days of leave, a monthly salary of $9,500, comprehensive medical coverage and preferential rates for loans just to name a few benefits. She had shortlisted six schools for Dilan in Luxembourg and she would rent an apartment in the city centre or somewhere close to Dilan’s school.

Overall, the Mother was convinced was that relocation was in Dilan’s best interests. While Singapore was where Dilan had grown up in, Luxembourg was a safe country and had an excellent standard of living. Besides, it would not prejudice the Father because the Mother claimed he never had a relationship with Dilan anyway, and much ink was spilled on how the Father had left the matrimonial home when Dilan was 2 years old, and through the years, was never there for Dilan as a father. For all his claims of wanting to see Dilan, she pointed out that despite his alleged issues with access, had never bothered to take out an application to see Dilan. It thus appeared that the Father was simply objecting to the relocation because she refused to relent on the issue of maintenance.

The Father asserted that it would not be in Dilan’s best interests to travel to Luxembourg for three reasons: a) the Mother’s “extreme greed for money and hatred” towards him and his family; (b) the Mother had made his access to the child extremely difficult and (c) the Mother’s “total neglect” towards child.

As regards (a), the Father described the Mother as being disdainful of the diamond ring he had gotten her for their marriage, instead of buying her a Solitaire diamond – which he wound up buying eventually. He complained of how during the marriage, she had demanded jewellery from him and he would accede to such demands. Further, just before Dilan was born, the Mother had removed all their jewellery, worth some $40,000, from their jointly held safe deposit box and transferred it to a new safe deposit box operated by her solely. Through the years, she had been engaging in harassing behaviour, filing applications to vary the maintenance upwards every few years only for them to be dismissed, and swiftly enforce maintenance orders against him just because he was late in paying maintenance. He had paid around $120,000 as maintenance for Dilan in the last 10 years and he asked for an accounting of how she had spent these monies.

On the issue of access, the Father spoke of how the Mother placed obstacles to access even though he only lived a 10 minutes’ walking distance from him. When Dilan was younger, the Mother would claim Dilan was not ready to meet the Father because of their distant relationship, and he would not get to see him at all. As he grew older, the Mother would make the Father wait sometimes for a whole hour before sending Dilan down for access, or if she felt that the Father was late for access, she would not allow access altogether. Even when the Mother allowed access, he lamented that the helper would tag along and not allow him to get too close to Dilan.

The Father was frustrated with the situation and according to him, in January 2017, the Mother stopped his access to Dilan completely on the grounds that the Father did not turn up regularly and on time to exercise his access; she told the Father to proceed to the Court if he so wanted such access.

He also claimed to have asked the Mother to allow him to have Dilan to take care of his studies for the next two years and prepare him for the PSLE. The Mother rejected this request. When the Father asked that he contact Dilan directly instead of through the Mother, the Mother asked the Father to purchase a mobile phone for Dilan and declined to give the Father Dilan’s mobile number.

In addition, the Mother did not inform the Father of any parent-teacher meetings; did not allow him to celebrate Dilan’s birthdays; did not allow the Father to bring Dilan to any of the birthday parties of the Father’s friends’ children, and disallowed him from visiting the family in India. Allowing the relocation, the Father submitted, would not be in Dilan’s best interests as he would certainly be cut off from Dilan’s life.

Suddenly in August 2020, the Father managed to have access to Dilan because the Mother was in his words, showing “mercy” towards him before taking Dilan away to Luxembourg. Even so, the Father bemoaned the Mother’s controlling ways where she would give him instructions on what to do, and even send his schoolwork over for the Father to complete with...