UHF v UHE

JurisdictionSingapore
JudgeGoh Kiat Yi
Judgment Date16 November 2017
Neutral Citation[2017] SGFC 129
CourtFamily Court (Singapore)
Docket NumberMSS No. 1924 of 2017, HCF/DCA No. 115 of 2017
Published date24 November 2017
Year2017
Hearing Date10 July 2017,27 July 2017,04 August 2017
Plaintiff CounselComplainant Wife in person
Defendant CounselMs Ho Chee Jia (Messrs Evershed Harry Elias LLP)
Subject MatterMaintenance for Wife, Section 69 Women's Charter
Citation[2017] SGFC 129
Magistrate Goh Kiat Yi: Introduction

This is an application by the complainant wife (“the wife”) against the respondent husband (“the husband”) for wife maintenance under Section 69 of the Women’s Charter (Cap 353) (‘the WC”).

After considering the evidence before me and hearing from the parties, I made the following orders on 4 August 2017: The husband to pay the wife a sum of S$1500 for July 2017 maintenance by 8 August 2017 and S$1500 for August maintenance by 31 August 2017. The monthly maintenance of S$1500 is thereafter to be paid on the last day of each month. The first payment on the 8 August 2017 is to be made by cheque for collection at the husband’s solicitor’s office. Subsequent payments are to be made by telegraphic transfer to wife’s Philippines Chinabank Account xxx. No order as to costs.

The husband has since filed an appeal against the whole of my decision.

Background Facts

The husband is a Malaysian Citizen who lives and works in Singapore. The wife is a citizen of the Philippines. Parties met in February 2008 in Singapore when the wife was on holiday. They developed a romantic relationship later that year. In December 2009, the wife moved to Singapore from the Philippines to live with the husband. Sometime in 2011, they moved to their current residence which is a private condominium along xxx.

Parties subsequently registered their marriage on 10 December 2014 at the Registry of Marriages, Singapore. The husband is presently 44 years old and the wife is 31 years old. There are no children to the marriage.

The husband works as a director with xxx and draws a net salary of around S$31,000.1 The husband was the sole bread winner of the family and the wife did not work during the course of the marriage.

Sometime in late 2016, the wife started to suspect that the husband was having an affair as the husband behaved differently towards her and would often get angry when she tried to talk to him. Parties’ relationship deteriorated and the husband told the wife that he was prepared to divorce her. He informed the wife that he would get his sister to engage a lawyer in Malaysia to prepare the divorce papers.

On 9 February 2017, the wife received a copy of the draft divorce papers. She panicked after reading the terms of the divorce papers. The wife left the matrimonial flat and returned to the Philippines.

The Wife’s case

Prior to her departure, the wife visited a psychiatrist, one Dr “M” from xxx clinic (“Dr M”) on 8 February 2017 as she felt depressed because of the husband’s conduct. Dr M prescribed her with anti-depressant medication and advised her to get away from the stress and to partake in activities that would improve her emotional well-being. On that same day, the wife charged a total sum of around S$120,000 to her supplementary credit cards provided by the husband. These monies were used to purchase gold bars and jewellery from miscellaneous retailers which she took along to the Philippines.

These items were then sold over a period of time for approximately $80,0002 and spent by the wife for her living expenses. She also spent on a self-development course, signed up at a gym, hanged out with friends and family, indulged in spas and healthcare services and went travelling.3 By April 2017, she had utilised all the monies drawn down from the account. She then contacted the husband to seek maintenance but he did not agree. The wife also discovered that the husband had cancelled her dependent pass. The wife proceeded to file the present application on 12 May 2017 and sought monthly maintenance of S$8300.

The Husband’s case

The husband does not dispute that he has ceased providing for the wife since she left the home in February 2017. However, he has not done so because the wife had charged over S$120,000 of monies to the supplementary credit card in which he was the principal card holder. Apart from that, the wife had also made unauthorised withdrawals amounting to around S$40,000 from parties’ joint account between May 2016 and January 2017 which had been meant for their retirement. In addition, the husband also alleged that the wife had taken approximately S$20,000 worth of jewellery from the safe deposit box in the matrimonial home. In total, the husband’s case is that the wife had left the home with at least S$180,000.4 The husband was of the view that the maintenance claim ought to be dismissed in these circumstances. The husband also disagreed with the quantum of maintenance sought.

The Law

Section 69(1) of the WC provides that:

“Any married woman whose husband neglects or refuses to provide her reasonable maintenance may apply to the court, and the court may, on due proof thereof, order the husband to pay a monthly allowance or a lump sum for her maintenance”

In Foo Ah Yan v Chiam Heng Chow [2012] 2 SLR 506 at [22], the Court of Appeal observed that the objective of section 69 applications is to provide modest maintenance to help the wife overcome her immediate financial need and is in contrast to maintenance for a former wife which serves the far more ambitious objective of giving her a fair share of the surplus wealth that had been acquired by the spouses during the subsistence of the marriage. The Court’s approach in S69 applications would generally be to provide “modest maintenance” to meet “immediate financial needs” having regard to having regard to all the circumstances of the case, including those enumerated in section 69(4). See also NMF v LTL [2014] SGDC 349 at [38] and TEM v TEN [2014] SGDC 238 at [19].

There were 2 issues for the court to determine. First, whether the wife can prove that the husband has neglected or refused to provide her reasonable maintenance. If the first issue is answered in the affirmative, the court considers the quantum of maintenance payable.

Issue 1: Whether the husband had neglected or refused to provide the wife with reasonable maintenance

The husband’s case is that he has not neglected or refused to pay reasonable maintenance. This is because the wife had drawn down on a large sum of the husband’s monies before she left the home. The husband felt financially exploited5 and was also of the view that reasonable maintenance has also been provided, given that the wife could not have spent such a large amount of monies within a few months.6

The wife argued that she was entitled to charge on the supplementary cards which are also in her name. The wife further denied that the withdrawals from the parties’ joint accounts were unauthorised. She supported this with a series of text messages between May 2016 and December 2016 which showed that a number of withdrawals were either made upon request by the husband or sanctioned by the husband.7

I accepted the wife’s evidence on the joint account which was supported by the text messages and her account during cross-examination. She also explained that the withdrawals made on other occasions were following conversations directly with the husband or over the phone.8 I noted that these monies were withdrawn over a period of time when the marriage was still intact. Importantly, this was a joint account which the husband had equal access to and he was apprised of withdrawals made by the wife during that period. I thus declined to hold these withdrawals against the wife.

The wife also strenuously denied taking any of the husband’s valuables from the safe deposit box. The husband submitted that the wife had likely taken these items as she had access to the safe deposit box. However, there is no other evidence to support this allegation and I declined to make a specific finding that she had taken them. In any event, it was not disputed by the wife that she had charged a hefty sum of S$120,000 on the supplementary cards which the husband had to pay.

The nub of the issue before me was whether the actions of the wife should prevent her from making a maintenance claim. I invited the husband’s counsel at the close of the case to consider whether there are case authorities on similar situations which may shed light on how a court may approach this.

Counsel submitted the cases of Andy Eirwan Bin Ismail v Bartropp Nicola Jane [2015] SGFC 87 and Van Dijk Cornelius Josephus Petrus v Baco Criselda Macaway [2014] SGDC 159.9 These authorities were not of much assistance as they concerned s114 maintenance of former wives, which serves a different objective.10 Counsel also submitted that the wife’s conduct of squandering the husband’s resources was one that is inequitable for the court to disregard and pointed me to the observations of Professor Leong Wai Kum in Elements of Family Law, 2nd Edition, at page 459 where the learned author suggested that:

“misconduct should, generally, pertain to acquisition or squandering of the spouses’ resources to be a relevant consideration or, if not, it should be gross so as to be inequitable to ignore. The Family Court in Yip Mei Ling (mw) v Tan Thiam Chye decided that it is only misconduct such that it would be inequitable to disregard that is to be considered. Misconduct that is less than gross may be ignored in deciding what is reasonable maintenance” 11

I noted that these observations whilst cited by the court in NMF v LTL [2014] SGDC, were not actually applied for the proposition that squandering of resources would qualify as conduct that would be inequitable for the court to disregard. Be that as it may, even if I accepted that the wife’s conduct was inequitable to disregard, it was one of the many factors12 to consider as far as the quantum of maintenance ordered was concerned. Counsel also made oral submissions after the court had stood down for decision, citing two further authorities, AGL v AGN [2010] SGDC 114 and TAC V TAD [2015] SGDC 28, which concerned Section 69 applications. However, maintenance orders were also made in both these cases. There were no cases before me which were...

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