WEI v WEJ

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Clement Yong
• Judgment Date: 13 June 2022
• Neutral Citation: [2022] SGFC 51
• Court: Family Court (Singapore)
• Hearing Date: 24 November 2020,11 May 2021,24 May 2021,13 December 2021,24 February 2022,17 March 2022,07 April 2022,12 May 2022,06 June 2022
• Docket Number: Divorce No 436 of 2017 (Summons No 2088 of 2020)
• Plaintiff Counsel: Johnson Loo Teck Lee and Lew Zi Qi (Drew & Napier LLC)
• Defendant Counsel: Poh Jun Zhe, Malcus (Chung Ting Fai & Co.)
• Subject Matter: Family Law,Custody,Care and control
• Published date: 18 June 2022

District Judge Clement Yong: Introduction

Old habits die hard. When such habits of a parent begin to adversely undermine the other parent to the detriment of a child, the court will take a serious view of the matter and will not hesitate to remedy the situation before it gets out of hand. In the present case, I made the decision to switch the care and control of two children to their father because I had concerns that their mother, subconsciously or otherwise, had continued to undermine the children’s relationship with their father on an ongoing basis. This was despite both parents having gone through various court-ordered therapeutic interventions to acknowledge and specifically weed out such behaviour.

Background The parties

The Plaintiff father (the “Father”) is a university graduate and is currently in his early 40s, under the employment of a reputable Wall Street bank in Singapore as an Executive Director. Having since remarried, he now lives with his wife and new-born twin daughters in a 4-storey terrace house located in the eastern part of Singapore. Also living in the house are the Father’s parents and his sister’s nuclear family.

The Defendant mother (the “Mother”) is currently in her late 30s and is educated at the upper secondary level. Like the Father, she has since remarried, albeit only recently. She is a homemaker, and her husband (“BF”) is a regular serviceman who is 13 years younger than her. Together, the Mother and BF live with her parents, her grandmother, her two children, and a domestic helper in a 3-room HDB flat in the central part of Singapore.

At the heart of this case are two male children born to the Father and the Mother during their marriage, hereinafter referred to as the “Older Child” and the “Younger Child” (collectively, the “Children”). They are now 12 and 10 years old respectively.

The divorce proceedings

The Father and the Mother (collectively, the “Parties”) got married in October 2006. In February 2017, the Father commenced divorce proceedings and Final Judgment was granted in May 2017. During the proceedings, the Parties had agreed to Interim Judgement being granted and, amongst other things, to have joint custody and shared care and control of the Children, with the Father effectively having weekend access with the Children whilst they lived with the Mother on weekdays.

Post-divorce acrimony leading to the present application

Despite the Interim Judgment having been recorded on a consent basis, things did not quite pan out as peacefully as one could hope for. It was not disputed that in March 2019, the relationship between the Parties broke down completely, and along with that the Father’s relationship with the Children.

At this juncture, it is necessary for context to briefly set out the Parties’ differing views as to why they each thought this state of affairs had arisen. According to the Father, his relationship with the Mother and Children turned sour in March 2019 when the Mother abruptly began a campaign of alienation against him. The Father theorised that this happened because the Mother was angry with him for evicting her from their matrimonial home, even though he had out of goodwill allowed her to stay on for an additional 14 months, which went beyond the agreed terms of the Interim Judgment.

On the other hand, the Mother described the breakdown in the relationship between the Father and the Children as a gradual one, beginning in 2018 when she sensed the growing tension brewing from the times the Children were brought to stay with the Father and his family on weekends. These tensions cumulated in an incident on 10 March 2019, wherein the Father was alleged to have verbally insulted and hit the Older Child on his arm, which purportedly caused him to feel suicidal.

As a result of the above incident, the Mother made a police report and applied for a Personal Protection Order (“PPO”) on behalf of the Children against the Father and ceased to facilitate any further weekend access with him. Her actions led the Father to believe that she made the said police report as an afterthought to justify not handing over the Children to him for the weekends. The Father then took out committal proceedings against the Mother for breaching the terms of the Interim Judgment.

Both the PPO and committal proceedings were eventually fixed for hearing in July 2019 before District Judge Darryl Soh, who provided a reality check to the Parties on the strength of their respective cases and stressed that they needed to work together for the best interests of the Children. The Parties then decided to withdraw their respective cases and recorded a consent order in FC/ORC XXXX/2019. Materially, the consent order provided that the Father’s access to the Children should take place in the presence of a Child Psychiatrist or other suitably qualified person appointed by the Father every Saturday for at least eight weeks.

Pursuant to the consent order above, the Father appointed Dr. ‘X’, a senior consultant psychiatrist in private practice, to facilitate his access sessions with the Children. These sessions took place between July and September 2019. On 10 March 2020, Dr. ‘X’ produced a report setting out his observations of the access sessions and his opinions on the key issues and recommended treatment plan. I will return to this report below, but for now it suffices to highlight that Dr. ‘X’ found that parental alienation had taken place, and that aside from the Mother, the Father and Children had contributed to the access impasse. Should this continue, the Children will suffer several social and domestic repercussions going forward. Not surprisingly, immediate treatment was recommended by Dr. ‘X’.

The present proceedings

In view of the factual developments since the Interim Judgment was granted, the Father took out the present summons on 27 August 2020 and urged me to give weight to the report by Dr. ‘X’ and the relevant parts of the Interim Judgment. Namely, to counteract the parental alienation which he had suffered, the Father prayed that care and control of the Children to be given to him, with supervised access to the Mother. He also sought a treatment order mandating the Mother and the Children to attend counselling or family therapy with a senior psychologist in private practice, Dr. ‘Y’ (as recommended by Dr. ‘X’).

The matter was then fixed for hearing before me, which was heard over a number of days, as summarised below:

Hearing Day	Date	Remarks
1	24 November 2020	At this point in time, the once-loving relationship between the Father and the Children had been fractured into an acrimonious one and it was for this reason that the Father took out the present proceedings. Having heard the Parties’ arguments and submissions, I called for a Custody Evaluation Report (“CER”) and directed parties to attend Divorce Support Specialist Agency (“DSSA”) counselling.
2	11 May 2021	A CER Report was prepared and placed before the court. To this end, I also heard further arguments from the Parties.
3	24 May 2021	Giving weight to the CER Report and facts of the case, I made an interim order which in essence granted the Father step-up access to the Children as follows: a) DSSA supervised visitation every weekend for eight weeks; b) Thereafter, DSSA-conducted supervised exchange every Saturday for eight weeks; and c) Thereafter, unsupervised access every Saturday for eight weeks.
4	13 December 2021	As the Parties had completed the abovementioned sessions, a DSSA Supervised Exchange and Visitation Programme Report and a Counselling Report were prepared and placed before the court. Having noted the good progress made in the restoration of the Father-Children relationship and the recommendations of the said reports, I made a further interim order for the Father to have overnight access with the Children on Friday nights with immediate effect, considering that it was also the December school holiday period.
5	24 February 2022	Prior to this hearing, which was fixed for decision, the Parties filed further affidavits informing that the Father-Children relationship had taken a very sudden and severe turn for the worse, just two days after I had made the above interim order for overnight access. Surprised and puzzled by this turn of events, I invited the Parties to make further submissions and they did so.
6	17 March 2022	I heard further arguments from the Parties.
7	7 April 2022	The hearing was adjourned as the court needed more time to consider the issues.
8	12 May 2022	I directed1 the Mother’s counsel to inform the Director of Legal Aid that the Mother had re-married on 13 March 2022 as this may have affected her household income and by extension, eligibility for legal aid.
9	6 June 2022	I delivered my decision. Having considered all the facts, I put in place the necessary safeguards and ordered that, inter alia, care and control of the Children be switched to the Father. The matter of costs was reserved, pending further submissions by the Parties.

From the above, it can be seen that this had been one tumultuous emotional roller coaster of a ride for the Children, the Father, the Mother, and even BF, whose role in the entire affair could not be said to be an insignificant one. Placing the Children’s best interests at the forefront of my considerations, it was in my view time to end this debacle and bring some order to the Children’s lives and restore their relationship with their Father. On the facts before me, I found it necessary to switch care and control of the Children to the Father, with the caveat that the transition be a gradual one in accordance with Dr. ‘Y’’s reunification plan which was placed before the court. I now give my reasons below for this decision.

Findings...