TNK v TNL

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Valerie Thean JC
• Judgment Date: 11 May 2016
• Neutral Citation: [2016] SGHCF 7
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Divorce Transfer No 1519 of 2013
• Published date: 10 March 2017
• Year: 2016
• Hearing Date: 02 March 2016,22 February 2016
• Plaintiff Counsel: Irving Choh and Stephanie Looi (Optimus Chambers LLC)
• Defendant Counsel: Lim Poh Choo (Alan Shanker & Lim LLC)
• Subject Matter: Family law,Maintenance,Wife,Matrimonial assets,Division
• Citation: [2016] SGHCF 7

Valerie Thean JC: Introduction

These grounds of decision discuss the appropriate ancillary financial provisions to be made for a home-maker wife in a long marriage.

Facts

The plaintiff (“the Wife”), and the defendant (“the Husband”), were married almost forty years ago on 21 November 1978. The Wife is 56 and the Husband is 60 years old. The parties have three children, all of whom have attained the age of majority. The children are 37, 34 and 28 years old respectively.

The Wife became a homemaker shortly after parties married. The Husband, who is a director in a listed company (“the Company”), was the main fee-earner throughout the marriage. First an odd job labourer, he later started the Company with a few business partners. In time, the Company became publicly listed. His assets are essentially derived from the success of the Company. Unfortunately, the fortunes of the Company have been in decline since 2012.

On 27 March 2013, the Wife commenced divorce proceedings against the Husband premised upon his behaviour. The divorce was uncontested. Interim Judgment was granted on 14 May 2013. The issues before me in the ancillaries on 22 February were as follows: (1) division of the matrimonial assets; (2) maintenance for the Wife; and (3) costs (together, “the issues”).

After hearing the parties, I gave oral judgment in relation to the ancillary matters on 2 March 2016. In brief, I ordered an equal division of the matrimonial assets valued at $5,200,670 and, in keeping with the need for a clean break, that a lump sum maintenance of $171,517 be paid to the Wife by the Husband. The parties have appealed, and I now set out the reasons for my decision in relation to the issues.

Division of assets Delineation of pool of matrimonial assets

The asset pool was determined from the joint table of assets prepared by counsel for the Husband and the Wife. The parties mutually agreed on the date the assets should be valued for the purposes of the ancillaries. The issue of the relevant operative date for determining the pool of matrimonial assets therefore did not arise for consideration. The asset pool is set out in Table 1 below. Table 1: Asset Pool ¹

The values assigned to all but one item in Table 1 were undisputed. The parties differed on the valuation of the Matrimonial Home, viz, a three-storey terrace house in Singapore (see S/No. 1 of Table 1) (“the Matrimonial Home”). The Husband submitted that the “estimated value” of the Matrimonial Home was $2,800,000;² however, no evidence was adduced in support of this valuation. The Wife arranged for a valuation of the Matrimonial Home and provided evidence that the market value of the Matrimonial Home was $2,900,000.³ In the premises, I used the value pinned on the Matrimonial Home by the Wife, as it was supported by evidence that was not, in any sense, undermined by the Husband during the proceedings. I highlight for completeness that the Husband was able to provide the latest documents for one of the Wife’s insurance policies (see S/No. 8 of Table 1), viz, AIA LXXXXXX640. In the hearing on 22 February 2016, counsel for the Wife, Mr Irving Choh (“Mr Choh”), agreed that the value in the document produced by the Husband should be used in the computation of the Wife’s insurance policies. This figure was used in the computation of the value of the Wife’s insurance policies.

Disputed assets

There were three categories of disputed assets. They were as follows: proceeds from the surrender of two of the Wife’s insurance policies; proceeds from the sale of a jointly-owned apartment; and sums withdrawn by the Wife from the joint account and put by the Wife into a joint account with their daughter (“the Daughter”) and used thereafter by the Daughter to purchase property. (together, “the Disputed Assets”).

After hearing parties, I decided not to return any of these sums into the pool, for the reasons that follow.

Proceeds from surrender of the Wife’s two insurance policies

The Wife surrendered two insurance policies for a total value of about $78,253. These were: (1) AIA UXXXXXX265 (“the AIA Policy”), which was surrendered on 20 June 2007 at a surrender value of $43,848.20; and (2) Great Eastern XXXXXX506 (“the GE Policy”), which was surrendered on 19 July 2010, at a surrender value of $34,404.50. The parties disputed how these assets should be accounted for.⁴

The Wife contended that the AIA Policy was surrendered by the Husband and that the proceeds were taken by him on surrender.⁵ The Wife adduced no evidence to support her position. In fact, during the hearing on 22 February 2016, Mr Choh acknowledged that the Wife had not stated how the proceeds were taken by the Husband despite the fact that she was both the owner and beneficiary of the AIA Policy. The Husband’s case was that the Wife took the proceeds from the AIA Policy because the proceeds would have been paid to her when the AIA Policy was surrendered. Given the lack of evidence adduced by the Wife to support her position, I agree with the Husband.

There was the second issue of the proceeds in relation to the GE Policy. The Wife contended that she surrendered the GE Policy to maintain herself, because after she commenced divorce proceedings, the Husband stopped paying the premiums in relation to those policies. She said that the proceeds from surrendering the GE Policy were used to supplement the $2,000 monthly expenses that the Husband used to pay her before she commenced the divorce proceedings. Counsel for the Husband, Ms Lim Poh Choo (“Ms Lim”), pointed out that the Husband had not stopped paying maintenance to the Wife at the material time when the GE Policy was surrendered. He only stopped paying maintenance in July 2015 when the Wife left the Matrimonial Home with the Daughter. In fact, the Husband only cancelled the supplementary credit card and the automatic teller machine (“ATM”) card for the parties’ joint account with POSB Bank at the end of 2012. In the face of these facts, Mr Choh conceded that no explanation had been adduced by the Wife as regards the proceeds in relation to the GE Policy.

Proceeds from the sale of a jointly-owned apartment

The parties at one time jointly owned an apartment at the Interlace at 208 Depot Road (“the Interlace Apartment”), which was purchased in August 2009. The Husband sold the Interlace Apartment in January 2013. The sale price was $1,129,800. As noted from the completion accounts prepared by the Husband’s solicitors in relation to the sale transaction, the Husband received $331,058 (“the Sale Proceeds”) after, inter alia, redeeming the mortgage on the Interlace Apartment.⁶ The proceeds were initially deposited in the parties’ OCBC joint account (“the EasiSave Account”) in March 2013.

In July 2013, slightly over three months after divorce proceedings were commenced by the Wife, the balance in the EasiSave Account had dwindled to about $1,676. It was unclear where the Sale Proceeds went to, and the Wife held the Husband accountable. The Husband, on his part, pointed out that the Wife had the same access to the EasiSave Account that he did. At the same time, the Wife pointed out that the Husband had not assisted with discovery in this regard. He failed to comply fully with a court order to disclose complete sets of his account statements between July 2011 and July 2014.⁷ The thrust of her submission was that there had been no full and frank disclosure by the Husband as regards the Sale Proceeds. The Husband on the other hand contended that he used the Sale Proceeds to, inter alia, maintain the family. He itemised the use of the Sale Proceeds as follows:⁸ $43,000 to buy a car for his son; about $20,000 to help his son buy a flat; $18,000 to partially repay a car loan; $63,000 as a loan to an errant friend that had not been repaid; $60,000 in shares, which were purchased in another friend’s name and have drastically plunged in value; maintenance and expenses of the household; and agent’s commission, legal fees and miscellaneous charges.

Based on the Husband’s cheque record, only item (c) was disbursed in 2013. Items (a) and (b) were disbursed between February and March 2014, which would be after the monies in the EasiSave Account had been spent.⁹ As regards the alleged bad loan and investment (items (d)–(e) above), the Husband did not adduce evidence to support those assertions. Separately, he mentioned paying $20,000 for his elder son’s renovation loan¹⁰ and expending $200,000 on a failed business venture with his younger son.¹¹

The Wife’s joint account with the Daughter

In the course of discovery, the Wife revealed a joint account with the Daughter with POSB Bank (“the POSB Account”), which the Husband hitherto had no knowledge of.¹² It was evident from the Wife’s passbook that about $139,000 (“the Withdrawn Sum”) had been withdrawn by the Daughter in two tranches of about $32,000 and $107,000 in early March 2013, slightly before the divorce proceedings were commenced by the Wife.¹³ About $1,276 remained in the POSB Account after the said withdrawals and as at the date of the ancillaries. The Wife contended that the monies in the POSB Account belonged to herself and the Daughter. The Wife stated that the monies in the POSB Account comprised allowances given to her by her children, which varied from $300 to $500.¹⁴ It was not disputed that the monies were withdrawn to finance the Daughter’s flat, where the Wife now lives together with the Daughter’s family.

The Husband submitted that the Withdrawn Sum should be added to the matrimonial pool, as it was siphoned from the matrimonial pool. In this regard, he argues that the sums in the POSB Account (including the Withdrawn Sum) were accumulated either from his monies or from the parties’ joint bank account.¹⁵

The Daughter filed an affidavit and averred that the sums in the POSB Account, while held jointly, were her own savings...