UTL v UTM

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Tan Puay Boon JC
• Judgment Date: 07 May 2019
• Neutral Citation: [2019] SGHCF 10
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: HCF/Divorce (Transferred) No 712 of 2015
• Published date: 23 January 2020
• Year: 2019
• Hearing Date: 16 July 2018,25 April 2018
• Plaintiff Counsel: Gill Carrie Kaur and Yap Ying Jie Clement (Eversheds Harry Elias LLP)
• Defendant Counsel: Tan Xin Er, Sylvie (B T Tan & Company)
• Subject Matter: Family Law,Divorce,Ancillary Matters,Division of matrimonial assets,Maintenance of wife,Maintenance of children
• Citation: [2019] SGHCF 10

Tan Puay Boon JC: Introduction

The Plaintiff husband (“the Husband”) and the Defendant wife (“the Wife”) (collectively “Parties”) solemnized their marriage in June 1992 in Singapore. The marriage broke down in November 2014, and Parties began to live separately.¹ The Husband filed for divorce in February 2015 on the ground of the Wife’s unreasonable behaviour. The Wife contested the claim, and counterclaimed that the marriage should be dissolved on the ground of the Husband’s unreasonable behaviour.

By the time the Interim Judgment was granted in November 2015 on the Wife’s counterclaim, Parties have been married for 23 years.

Together with the Interim judgment granted in November 2015, a consent order was recorded on the Parties having joint custody of the children, with sole care and control to the Wife.

Access arrangements were also agreed. The Husband subsequently applied for a variation of these arrangements, and they were varied by consent,² although their implementation do not appear to have been fully resolved.

The ancillary matters of the division of the matrimonial assets, including the matrimonial home, maintenance for the Wife, and maintenance of the children were adjourned to be dealt with.

Background of the Parties

The Husband was born in 1965 and is now 54 years old. The Wife was born in 1968, and is now 51 years old. They are both have accountancy degrees. Their two children, a daughter and a son, were born in 2001 and 2006, respectively. They now both go to school in Singapore. The daughter studies in an international school while the son studies in a local secondary school.

The Husband worked in different companies in different cities in China for a number of years after leaving his job in Singapore. From 1995 to 1999, he worked in Shenzhen as a finance manager for an international company. From 1999 to 2007, he worked in Guangzhou for two different companies. During that period, he travelled between Guangzhou and Shenzhen, where the Wife and the children were living. Where necessary, he would remain and live in Guangzhou. From 2008 onwards, he worked for a Hong Kong company in Beijing.³ He moved to Hong Kong for work in July 2015.⁴

The Husband has been unemployed since December 2017. Prior to this date, he was a Finance Director in the Hong Kong Company. His monthly income was then HKD160,00.00 ($29,053.93).⁵ The Wife averred that the Husband receives a total monthly rental income of approximately $6,255.⁶

The Wife is currently a home maker,⁷ but she used to work as a Finance Manager until August in 2010.⁸ After their marriage, she had remained in Singapore when the Husband went to work in Shenzhen in 1995. While still in Singapore, she worked as an insurance agent selling insurance policies. From 1998 to 1999, she lived with the Husband in Shenzhen where he was working. She was also working as a finance manager there. After the Husband obtained employment in Guangzhou, she, and the children after they were born, lived in Shenzhen until 2010. During this period, she remained employed by the same company.⁹ The Wife left her job and moved to Beijing together with the children in 2010. She did not seek employment there.

When the marriage broke down in November 2014, the Parties were still living in Beijing. They lived separate and apart, with the children living with the Wife. After the Husband moved to Hong Kong in July 2015 for work, the Wife and the children returned to Singapore in August that year.¹⁰

Matters in dispute

The issues that are before me for determination are the division of the matrimonial assets, maintenance of the Wife and the children, and costs of the ancillary matters hearing.

Division of matrimonial assets Currency exchange rates

As the values of a number of the Parties’ matrimonial assets are denominated in currencies other than the Singapore Dollar (SGD or $), in the calculation of the values of these assets, I will apply the following exchange rates agreed upon by Parties:¹¹ 1 SGD ($) = 0.761 USD (US Dollar) 1 SGD ($) = 2.948 MYR (Malaysian Ringgit) 1 SGD ($) = 4.804 RMB (Renminbi) 1SGD ($) = 5.980 HKD (Hong Kong Dollar)

The legal principles

Section 112 of the Women’s Charter (Cap 353) (“the Women’s Charter”) sets out the power of the Court to order the division of matrimonial assets, and lays down the considerations that are to be taken into account when making the division. I keep these in mind when dividing the matrimonial assets.

In their submissions, Parties have not treated any class of matrimonial assets separately when dealing with the division of the matrimonial assets. I therefore apply the global assessment methodology (see NK v NL [2007] 3 SLR 743 (“NK v NL (2007)”) at [31] – [33]) to the division of the matrimonial assets in the present case. This “consists of four distinct phases: viz, identification, assessment, division and apportionment” of the matrimonial assets.

Identification and assessment of assets Assets that are agreed

Parties have signed a Joint Summary of Relevant Information, which was last updated on 16 July 2018. The following assets and their values were agreed:

No.	Description	Agreed values ($)
Jointly held assets
1.	Toa Payoh Property12	850,000.00
2.	Oxley Property13	1,850,000.00
Sub-total (A)	2,700,000.00
Assets in Wife’s sole name
3.	Beijing Yang Guang Du Shi Property (RMB 18,926,700)14	3,939,779.35
4.	Dong Mao Property sale proceeds	189,770.00
5.	Total surrender value of all declared insurance policies	167,914.62
6.	1,000,057 shares in Broadway Industrial Group Limited	129,007.35
7.	Investment in HGID GEM EQT (PC)-S$ unit trust	6,648.75
8.	CPF Monies as at (17 March 2016)	56,622.58
9.	CANAI leftover stocks/inventory	13,570.80
10.	Prulink Investor A/C Ref No. ending 8842	45,632.59
11.	Monies owed to Wife by one Chong	10,000.00
Sub-total (B)	4,558,946.04
Assets in Husband’s sole name
12.	Beijing, XinJingJiaYuan	1,124,063.28
13.	Insurance Policies	95,042.67
14.	Bank Accounts	44,674.28
15.	CPF Monies (as at 17 December 2015)	50,741.88
16.	Hong Kong MPF Account (HKD 661,172.56 as at Interim Judgment date)	110,563.97
17.	China Provident Fund (RMB 58,069.85 as at 30 June 2015)	12,087.81
18.	Monies used to purchase the HK Property (HKD 5,533,280)	925,297.66
Sub-total (C)	2,362,471.55
Total [(A) + (B) + (C)]	9,621,417.59

Assets that are excluded

Parties agreed on 25 April 2018 not to dispute or include the following two children bank accounts into the pool of matrimonial assets, on the condition that the consent order would reflect that the balance in the accounts would be transferred to the children at the age of 21 or such later age as the court deems appropriate: POSBkids a/c no. ending 2076 ($7,564.59); and POSBkids a/c no. ending 0848 ($5,022.17).

It was additionally agreed that the following accounts of the Wife: DBS Singapore Fixed Deposit a/c no. ending 0015; UOB Singapore a/c no. ending 0206; OCBC Singapore a/c no. ending 4001; CMB China a/c no. ending 2481; CMB China a/c no. ending 9933; CMB China a/c no. ending 3929; CEB China a/c no. ending 2328; and CEB China a/c no. ending 4042 would not be pursued.¹⁵

I therefore exclude these accounts from the division of the matrimonial assets.

Assets that are not agreed

The bulk of the disputed assets, save one, are assets allegedly held by the Wife. These are set out in the Joint List of Assets listed in EXCEL spreadsheet and Other Disputed Assets (“JLA(U)”) that was updated by Parties as at 16 July 2018. I will deal with each of these in turn.

Value of declared bank accounts of Wife¹⁶

The Wife has listed several bank accounts. While there was general agreement as to the values of the declared bank accounts as of the date of the Interim Judgment, the Wife claimed that the values of the bank accounts had dipped after that date as she had to use the funds to support herself and the children. She also claimed that the monies in three POSBkids accounts (a/c no. ending 3280 ($535.83); a/c no. ending 2922 ($1,238.89) and a/c no. ending 3605 ($6,157.67)) totalling $7,932.39 were intended for or belong to the children.

As it is the values of the bank accounts at the date of the Interim Judgment that form part of the matrimonial assets, I adopt the values of the declared bank accounts closest to that date and value them at $65,032.27. In arriving at this amount, I have not excluded the $7,932.39 which the Wife sought to deduct as there is no objective evidence that the monies in the three POSB accounts were wholly for the children’s use.

Zeng Dong shares¹⁷

The Husband alleged that the shares, which were sold by the Wife in August 2015 at cost for $104,079.94 (RMB 500,000), were worth at least $211,097.32 (RMB 1,040,000) based on the Share Purchase Contract dated 20 December 2013 which has a guarantee for certain annual bonuses and a formula for selling the shares to the company. He alleged that she has dissipated the proceeds of sale, and also said that the larger amount should be included in the pool of matrimonial assets. The Wife explained that the majority of the sale proceeds were spent on the children’s expenses, and to refurbish the Toa Payoh Property where she and the children were living. She added that the company has not been listed yet, and there were restrictions of all share transactions. Also, the returns were based on estimates provided by the company, and would only apply after it was listed. Since she had already sold the shares, she would not be able to enjoy the benefits that were tied to the shares.

I do not think that the shares...