VMI v VMJ

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Chia Wee Kiat
• Judgment Date: 12 November 2020
• Neutral Citation: [2020] SGFC 95
• Court: Family Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: FC/D 356/2020 (FC/RA 5/2020)
• Published date: 19 November 2020
• Year: 2020
• Hearing Date: 03 September 2020,21 September 2020
• Plaintiff Counsel: Mr Paul Loy and Ms Lin Si Hui (WONGPARTNERSHIP LLP)
• Defendant Counsel: Mr Koh Tien Hua, Mr Ivan Cheong and Mr Chew Wei En (Harry Elias Partnership LLP)
• Subject Matter: Family law,Pleadings,Striking Out
• Citation: [2020] SGFC 95

District Judge Chia Wee Kiat: Background

The Plaintiff shall be referred to as the “Wife” and the Defendant shall be referred to as the “Husband”. The parties were married in 1987. They have a child who is now an adult.

After 32 years of marriage, the Wife commenced the current divorce proceedings on the ground of the Husband’s behaviour. On 20 July 2020, the Husband filed FC/SUM 1942/2020 (“SUM 1942”), an application to strike out paragraphs 5 to 22 of the Wife’s Statement of Particulars (“SOP”). According to the Husband, these particulars had nothing to do with why the marriage had broken down and disclose no reasonable cause of action for the divorce.¹

This application was made pursuant to Rule 405 of the Family Justice Rules which provides as follows:

The Court may at any stage of the proceedings order to be struck out or amended any pleading or the endorsement of any writ in the action, or anything in any pleading or in the endorsement, on the ground that – (a) it discloses no reasonable cause of action or defence, as the case may be; (b) it is scandalous, frivolous or vexations; (c) it may prejudice, embarrass or delay the fair trial of the action; or (d) it is otherwise an abuse of the process of the Court.

The Husband asserts that this was an attempt by the Wife to validate her alleged indirect contributions to the marriage, which should only be dealt with at the ancillary stage and not at the divorce trial.²

SUM 1942 was dismissed by the learned Assistant Registrar Sarah Chua (“the AR”) on 24 July 2020 with costs fixed at $600 to the Wife. In dismissing the application, the AR said as follows:

I do not see that paragraphs 5 to 22 SOP are entirely irrelevant to the issue of UB. There are grounds to say that they significantly accentuate the unreasonableness of the Defendant’s behaviour. In terms of the threshold for striking out, it is not satisfied. DC’s application to strike out paras 5 to 22 is dismissed.³

The Husband appealed against the AR’s decision. The Husband’s appeal, FC/RA 5/2020 (“RA 5”), came up for hearing before me on 3 September 2020. On 21 September 2020, I dismissed the appeal and provided brief oral grounds. As the Husband has appealed against my decision, I now set out my grounds of decision.

The Husband’s position

In the main, the Husband’s position is that the AR had failed to appreciate the function of pleadings and that only material facts ought to be pleaded. The Husband submits that paragraphs 5 to 22 of the SOP do not contain any material facts of his alleged unreasonable behaviour, and at its highest, only contained subordinate facts. The Husband contends that subordinate facts, which are not entirely irrelevant to the issues before the court, should not be pleaded.⁴

The Husband further contends that the AR failed to examine each individual paragraph to determine if there were any material facts pleaded and what exactly was the alleged unreasonable behaviour that was significantly accentuated by these paragraphs.⁵ The Husband submits that there was no necessity for these pleadings to remain as the other portions of the pleadings (in particular [24]-[26] of the SOP) could already be reasonably construed as unreasonable behaviour.⁶

The Husband submits that paragraphs 5 to 22 of the SOP must be struck out as they disclose no reasonable cause of action, are not material facts to the issue before the Court and that the pleadings are vexatious and frivolous.⁷

The Wife’s position

The Wife contends that paragraphs 5 to 22 set out the bedrock of the parties’ marriage.⁸ According to the Wife, all of this is especially significant given that it is the Wife’s case that the Wife and the Husband had built up a business together, with her rolling up her sleeves and contributing in both resources and efforts, but the Husband has behaved in a way that not only does not recognise and acknowledge the Wife’s due, but that has deteriorated over time to such an extent as to be intolerable to the Wife particularly in the context of how the parties had built up a long marriage together over a span of 3 decades.⁹

The Wife points out that one of the reasons for the irretrievable breakdown of the parties’ marriage is the Husband’s attitude and behaviour towards her despite her efforts and devotion to him and their business throughout the years.¹⁰ The Wife contends that paragraphs 5 to 22 of the SOP are both relevant and necessary to appreciate the extent of the Wife’s hard work and contributions, and both lay the context and stand in sharp contrast to the Husband’s conduct towards her.¹¹ The Wife points out that paragraphs 4 and 23 (in addition to paragraphs 5 to 22) of the SOP similarly set out the Wife’s case in relation to the parties’ joint efforts towards the marriage but the Husband did not seek to strike out these paragraphs. ¹²

Analysis

As a start, it is worth reiterating the trite principle of law that a judge hearing a Registrar’s Appeal exercises confirmatory jurisdiction, not appellate jurisdiction. This is clear from Lian Soon Construction Pte Ltd v Guan Qian Realty Pte Ltd [1999] 1 SLR(R) 1053 at [38] where it was held that:

… A judge in chambers who hears an appeal from the Registrar is entitled to treat the matter as though it came before him for the first time. The judge in chambers in effect exercises confirmatory jurisdiction. The judge’s discretion is in no way fettered by the decision below …

SUM 1942, from which the present appeal arose, concerns the striking out of pleadings. As noted by the High Court in Nirumalan K Pillay and others v A Balakrishnan and others [1996] SGHC 157 (at [9]):

The court has wide coercive and corrective powers to ensure that parties adhere to the well-settled and substantive and formal rules of pleading. In proper cases the court may even strike out defective pleadings…

The power to strike out is derived from Rule 405 and the inherent powers of the Court to “make any order as may be necessary to prevent injustice or to prevent an abuse of the process of the Court” (Rule 985) : see commentary in Singapore Court Practice 2017 (Jeffrey Pinsler gen ed) (LexisNexis, 2017) at [18/19/1] on the equivalent rules in the Rules of Court.

The fundamental rule, as set out in Rule 393, is that every pleading must contain only a statement in a summary form of the material facts on which the party pleading relies for his claim or defence but not the evidence by which those facts are to be proved, and the statement must be as brief as the nature of the case admits.

It is common ground between the parties that the test for striking out, in the context of a claim based on behaviour, is that set out in Chen Stella Yfantidis v Chen Yu Hian Christopher [2004] SGDC 35 (“Chen Stella”).¹³ In particular, paragraph 23(7) states as follows:

In the context of unreasonable behaviour particulars: 1. The test for striking out particulars is whether (1) after the striking out, the remaining particulars could be reasonably construed as constituting an allegation of unreasonable behaviour; or (2) whether the particulars significantly accentuate the unreasonableness of the behaviour set out in certain other particulars. 2. The personality and behaviour of the petitioner may be a material fact if it is necessary to view the respondent’s behaviour in the light of the petitioner’s behaviour and personality in order to construe it as unreasonable, or in order to significantly accentuate its unreasonableness. 3. Each type of unreasonable behaviour would constitute a material fact, and must be pleaded. In addition, if a particular type of unreasonable behaviour is pleaded, then the date and time and a brief nature of each incident of that type of unreasonable behaviour would be material facts. This is however subject to the principle of moderation set out in paragraph 15 above.

It is the Wife’s case that the marriage has broken down irretrievably under s 95 (3)(b) of the Women’s Charter (Cap 353) in that the Husband has behaved in such a way that the Wife cannot reasonably be expected to live with the Husband.¹⁴

The Wife’s SOP contains a total of 52 paragraphs. The Husband contends that paragraphs 5 to 22 of the SOP are not material facts and the majority of the particulars are about the Wife’s contributions which should be dealt with at the Ancillary Matters (“AM”) hearing.¹⁵

As reference has been made to paragraphs 4 to 26 of the SOP, it would be convenient at this stage to set these out:

STATEMENT OF PARTICULARS

1 … 4 The Parties have been married for some 32 years. However, the Defendant has increasingly been conducting himself in such a manner that the Plaintiff has since concluded that she can no longer continue with the marriage. a. Although the Parties worked together for many years to build up a business empire, including [redacted], a successful business listed on the Singapore Exchange, the Defendant has thoroughly belittled the Plaintiff’s work and efforts, and has consistently failed to give the Plaintiff her due. b. The Defendant’s unreasonable behaviour extended to verbal abuse of the Plaintiff, including in front of the staff of [redacted], to such an extent that the Plaintiff has been diagnosed with clinical depression for which she has had to consult psychiatrists and take psychiatric medication. c. The Plaintiff has also been led to believe that the Defendant has been involved in multiple extra-marital affairs with various women, starting from 2012, if not earlier. i. The Plaintiff believes that the Defendant has been in an improper relationship with a younger, married woman, the 1st Co-Defendant, since no later than 2012. ii. Despite past promises to the Plaintiff that he would cease this improper relationship, the Plaintiff now realises that the Defendant has not in fact done so, and he has been lying to her for...