VHA v VHB

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Kathryn Thong
• Judgment Date: 18 March 2020
• Neutral Citation: [2020] SGFC 31
• Court: Family Court (Singapore)
• Hearing Date: 27 November 2019,21 October 2019,30 October 2019
• Docket Number: OSG 12/2018, OSG 21/2018
• Plaintiff Counsel: Foo Soon Yien and Brenda Kong (BR Law Corporation)
• Defendant Counsel: Imran Khwaja, Edith Chen and Sudhershen Hariram (Tan Rajah and Cheah)
• Subject Matter: Family law,Guardianship of Infants Act,Care and control
• Published date: 27 March 2020

District Judge Kathryn Thong: Introduction

These are my grounds of decision for granting the Plaintiff Father sole care and control of parties’ son, J. The Defendant Mother appealed against my decision as she wanted sole care and control; the Father appealed against the joint custody order.

In all the circumstances as they stood at this time, I could not find it would be in J’s best interests to be in his Mother’s care and control even though he was affectionate towards her during the supervised visitation (“SV”) sessions as observed in the various DSSA reports.

Background

The 49-year-old Father is a Director in an Accounts Executive role earning more than $25,000 a month and the 36-year-old Mother is unemployed and has been an undischarged bankrupt since July 2013.

Parties married after a whirlwind romance. Shortly after meeting each other, the Mother had moved in with the Father in April 2016 and quickly fell pregnant. It appeared that both were keen to have a child and parties married in October 2016.

J was born in March 2017 and the Mother stayed home to care for J. Home then was a rented 3-storey landed property. A domestic helper engaged by the Father also assisted her and to this day, this helper cares for J.

Trouble brewed early in the marriage. The Mother had cut up photo albums; smashed crockery; wielded a scissors in front of the Father amongst other unusual behaviour. The Father had some inkling then that the Mother could be extreme in her behaviour and was on medication. As the Court appointed psychiatrist, Dr S. would later point out in his report: “[The Father] was aware that [the Mother] did not have a stable family background or any social network but his desire to have a child did not let him act on those warning signs.”

Matters escalated in October 2017 when the Mother repeatedly sent expletive laden messages to the Father concerning him and his family. She also sent vitriolic messages to the Father’s sister; on one occasion, this numbered up to 180 messages even though the sister deigned to respond to any of these messages. Many of these messages were accusatory and referred to the Father’s sister, her husband and their son being murderers and rapists.

The Father also obtained a memo dated 5 December 2017 from an IMH psychiatrist who saw the Mother in October 2017. In the memo, the said psychiatrist stated she had reason to believe that: “the current marital crisis is activating her borderline personality traits, leading to being easily triggered into episodic agitation, intense anger, violent gestures and paranoid ideation….If she is currently experiencing [an episode of intense agitation], she may require a safe and secure psychiatric environment for her containment and in which to stabilise.”

On 10 January 2018, the Father told the Mother to take a shower after which the family would go for a walk. Unbeknownst to the Mother, whilst she was in the shower, the Father took J, the helper and left the matrimonial home for good.

On the same day, the Father’s then solicitors, wrote to the Mother that in the interim, parties could have joint custody of J with sole care and control to the Father, and she could see J only on a supervised basis.

Eventually, there was an agreement for the Mother to have supervised access at Paragon. On 17 January 2018, after access ended, the Mother refused to return J to the Father as agreed. The police were called in where the Mother claimed the Father had kidnapped J. Parties then proceeded to Tanglin Police station whereupon the Mother warded J at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (“KKH”), alleging that J had a whooping cough and had been abused.

The Father then took out OSG 12/2018 on an urgent basis and the Mother did likewise shortly thereafter, vide OSG 21/2018. On 26 January 2018, an interim order was made for J to remain at KKH and for parties to have equal access to the child.

Child Protection Services (“CPS”) subsequently got involved when a referral was made to it on 19 January 2018. CPS brokered an arrangement between parties to care for J whilst he was warded in KKH. However, there were problems with carrying out the agreement. CPS expressed concerns over the Mother’s mental and emotional instability and inability to abide by the visitation agreement. It thus invoked on 8 February 2018, the Protector’s Order for J to be committed to a place of safety, i.e. KKH, until the matter could be brought to the Youth Court’s attention.

On 9 February 2018, the Youth Court made a care and protection order, finding inter alia, that the Mother was uncooperative in disclosing her mental health history and that J “was at risk of being ill-treated by the Mother”. He also found that “there is a risk that the Mother would act in an unreasonable and/or unstable manner which is likely to endanger the safety of the child.”

CPS subsequently delivered a report on 6 April 2018 where they found that there were no care or protection concerns and recommended that the order for care and protection lapse. The Youth Court agreed and declined to make further orders.

On 17 May 2018, a consent order was recorded after mediation for the Mother to have supervised exchange of J at the DSSA every Monday, from 2pm to 6pm, pending the final hearing of OSG 12/2018 and OSG 21/2018.

However, before the final hearing, the Father filed on 12 June 2018 and thereafter, a series of interlocutory applications for discovery and interrogatories against various medical professionals. In response, the Mother took out an application for increased interim access.

Counsel for the Father, Ms Foo Soon Yien, urged the Court to order discovery of: “ [a]ll medical and/or clinical records, including but not limited to notes, memos, and reports, whether recorded electronically, typed or handwritten, and correspondence between [the relevant hospital/the relevant doctor] and the [Mother and/or the Mother’s representatives and/or the Mother’s solicitors] relating to [the Mother’s] psychiatric/medical condition and treatments and/or consultation with [the relevant Doctor].

The summonses also prayed for the Father’s solicitors to inspect and take copies of the same if required, and for an order of cross-examination to be made against the relevant doctors if there were inadequate and/or in dispute.

The Father’s case was simply that the Mother clearly had a mental condition which he was very precise about – borderline personality disorder (“BPD”) – and that she needed to be assessed. After having uncovered her patient history at the IMH and having discovered how many psychiatrists she had been visiting and how much medication she had obtained from them, the Father wanted the Mother to have supervised access only. It was clear that J could be in danger, as the Mother was not only emotionally unstable as seen from her tirades of abuse against the Father and his family, but also the fact that such medication had side effects and the Mother appeared to be consuming large doses of them.

The Mother through her counsel, Mr Imran Khwaja and Mr Hariram, case contended that her psychiatrist (at [11] above) had merely stated she had BPD traits. It was a leap to suggest that she had BPD itself. All the Mother had was social anxiety disorder. The Father was running a vicious campaign that the Mother had a mental condition when she was the primary caregiver of J and nothing impaired her ability to care for J. While she had indeed purchased benzodiazepines from various psychiatrists, her principal psychiatrist had simply ordered to take them on an “as need” basis. The said psychiatrist had found that there was no contraindication to the Mother caring for J.

Mr Khwaja submitted that the Father had obviously intended to thwart the final hearing by applying for discovery and interrogatories at such a late stage, and to further deprive the Mother of access. Giving the Father access to the underlying memos etc. would also give the Father more ammunition to perpetuate the falsehood that the Mother was mentally unfit to care for J.

Ms Foo countered that the Father had found out about the Mother’s visit to various psychiatrists because she had made the claims for their payment through his employer. It was only when he approached his employers for details of the claims that he discovered the copious amounts of medications she had been consuming. If there was nothing that the Mother was hiding, why could she not just consent to the disclosure of her medical records? Instead she persisted in being uncooperative just as she was with CPS, which was why the Father was compelled to take out these discovery and interrogatories applications. I thought Mr Khwaja’s rejoinder made much intuitive – why should the Mother he contended, who was mentally sound, allow such an invasion of her privacy and fodder to propagate more lies?

As I had indicated to Ms Foo at the hearing, I did not see the need for such extensive discovery and interrogatories, and less reason for the Father to have access to the underlying documents. In any event, the Father appealed against my decision to adjourn these applications to when the Court psychiatrist was appointed, if at all.

I will not delve into the minutiae of what transpired thereafter, save that I appointed a Court expert, Dr S., from the IMH to assess the Mother. I was concerned about the not insignificant amounts of medical drugs the Mother had purchased, even though there was no direct evidence that she was consuming them. The somewhat blithe explanation that she was directed to take them on an “as need” basis failed to explain why she had to visit more than seven psychiatrists in a span of 9 months and obtained large quantities of Xanax and Valium from them. While there had yet to be any medical evidence that the Mother was not sound as the Father claimed ad infinitum, and no evidence of direct harm on J, given the...