WFK v WFL

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Kevin Ho
• Judgment Date: 03 August 2022
• Neutral Citation: [2022] SGFC 64
• Court: Family Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Divorce No. 16 of 2020; Maintenance Summons 280 of 2021; and Maintenance Summons 407 of 2021
• Published date: 13 August 2022
• Year: 2022
• Hearing Date: 08 April 2022,20 June 2022
• Plaintiff Counsel: Mr Tan Yun Hao, Alson (M/s Legal Solutions LLC)
• Defendant Counsel: Mr Yeo Khee Chye Raymond (M/s Raymond Yeo)
• Citation: [2022] SGFC 64

District Judge Kevin Ho: Introduction

The present proceedings involve 3 related matters between the parties – ie. Madam [AY] (“Wife”) and Mr [BL] (“Husband”).

The parties married in September 2000 and the interim judgment for divorce (“IJ”) was granted in September 2020. The parties’ marriage thus lasted for 20 years. There are 3 children to the marriage, [AG] (who is 20 years old), [HG] (who is 18 years old) and [LG] (who is 16 years old) (collectively, the “Children”).

The 3 matters which came on for hearing before me are :- the ancillary matters (“AM”) proceedings consequent on the divorce of the parties, vide. FC/D 16/2020; Maintenance Summons No. 280 of 2021 (“MSS 280”), filed by the Wife to enforce an interim maintenance order dated 16 May 2019 made against the Husband (ie. VO(MO) 194/2019) (“MO 194”); and Maintenance Summons No. 407 of 2021 (“MSS 407”) which is the Husband’s application to retrospectively vary the quantum of maintenance payable under MO 194.

Central to the two MSS applications is MO 194 (a consent order entered into between the parties), the broad terms of which are as follows: the Husband is to pay to the Wife a monthly sum of $4,500 (being $1,500 for the Wife, and $1,000 each for the 3 children); the Husband is responsible for paying various outgoings including electricity and/or water bills, medical expenses (by way of reimbursement) and some expenses relating to [LG]; and the Husband is to pay for any other items of expenses which are agreed between the parties. I will revisit MO 194 later on in this judgment, when I set out my findings in respect of MSS 407 and MSS 280.

I heard the proceedings over two tranches – ie. on 14 April 2022 and 20 June 2022. At the beginning of the hearing in June 2022, both parties’ counsel confirmed that the following issues remain outstanding for the Court’s determination: As regards the AM proceedings – only the just and equitable division of parties’ matrimonial assets and the maintenance payable for both the Wife and Children remain outstanding as the parties have reached an agreement on the custody, care and control of the Children. As regards the MSS 280 and MSS 407 – the Wife’s position is that there should be no variation of MO 194, and that the Court should enforce all outstanding arrears due to her. The Husband, on the other hand, asks that MO 194 be varied retrospectively (ie. with effect from August 2020) such that he is only required to pay $2,000 per month from August 2020. He also asks that all payments made by him in excess of that amount (including his payments for the Wife’s rent) be taken into account in the overall assessment of the case.

For completeness, both parties had – through counsel – confirmed that the MSS proceedings are to be conducted as hearings in Chambers, without the need for the cross-examination of witnesses.¹ Both parties also filed affidavits in support and/or reply in respect the MSS applications as well as the usual affidavits for the AM proceedings, all of which were relied on during the hearing.

For easy reference, I set out below the following affidavits and documents filed by the parties:

Wife’s Affidavits	Husband’s Affidavits
Wife’s Affidavit of Assets and Means dd 23 November 2020	“PA1”	Husband’s Affidavit of Assets and Means dd 23 November 2020	“DA1”
Wife’s 2nd AM Affidavit (incorporating the supporting affidavit for MSS 280 and the reply affidavit of MSS 407) dd 12 January 2022	“PA2”	Husband’s 2nd AM Affidavit (incorporating the Husband’s reply to Wife’s affidavit filed for MSS 280 and MSS 407) dd 12 January 2022	“DA2”
Wife’s 3rd AM Affidavit dd 11 April 2022	“PA3”	Husband’s 3rd AM Affidavit dd 18 April 2022	“DA3”
Wife’s Discovery Affidavit dd 23 September 2021	“PD-1”	Husband’s Discovery Affidavit dd 27 October 2021	“DD-1”
Wife’s 2nd Discovery Affidavit dd 13 October 2021	“PD-2”	Husband’s Written Submissions dd 6 April 2022	“DS”
Wife’s 3rd Discovery Affidavit dd 1 December 2021	“PD-3”	Husband’s Affidavit filed in support of MSS 407 dd 19 October 2021	“DA1(MSS)”
Wife’s Affidavit (for MSS 407 and MSS 280) dd 21 October 2021	“PA1(MSS)”
Wife’s Written Submissions dd 6 April 2022	“PS-1”
Wife’s Further Written Submissions dd 5 May 2022	“PS-2”

Having set out the issues for determination, I will now address these matters in turn, starting with the AM issues.

AM Issue 1 : Division of Matrimonial Assets

As the Husband’s counsel had noted in his written submissions,² the first step the Court would usually take when dealing with the division of the parties’ matrimonial assets is to ascertain the pool of assets available for division.

Matrimonial Asset Pool

In the present case, both parties are ad idem as to what the pool constitutes and the valuation of their assets. In their written submissions,³ they describe the pool of matrimonial assets as follows :

S/No.	Asset	Wife ($)	Husband ($)
1	POSB Account ending with 724-4	-	65.53
2	CPF Monies (Total)	121,704.12	627,813.40
3	DBS Account ending with 9222	16,274.31	-
4	DBS e-Multi-Currency Account ending with 1290	0.27	-
5	Citibank Maxisave Account	1,241.73	-
Total	139,220.43	627,878.93

The main difference between the parties is that the Husband also alleges that the Wife’s assets ought to include: (a) the proceeds of sale of some of the Husband’s personal effects (ie. vinyl records and luxury watches) of an indeterminate amount; and (b) the Wife’s motor vehicle.

I will address the issue regarding the Husband’s vinyl records and watches at [72], below. For present purposes, it suffices to say that I do not find that it is appropriate to add the notional value of these items back into the matrimonial pool.

With respect to the Wife’s motor vehicle, I find that the Husband has not shown any evidence in support of his claim that this is a matrimonial asset liable for division for the following reasons : The existence of this asset was first raised by the Husband in an affidavit he had filed in respect of MSS 407.⁴ In response, the Wife explained that she had purchased the vehicle with her personal savings and that it was bought for the benefit of the Children.⁵ The difficulty with the Husband’s case is that in his affidavit (filed in October 2021), he claims that the Wife had “recently” purchased the motor vehicle. Based on the documents which he had provided, I understand the reference to “recently” to be sometime in July 2021 as that is what the documents shows. However, IJ was granted in September 2020 and assets acquired after the IJ date would not usually fall within the pool of matrimonial assets for division;⁶ the Husband did not argue that the default operative date for the determination of the matrimonial pool (ie. IJ date) should be changed. Accordingly, I find that the Wife’s motor vehicle should not be included into the parties’ matrimonial pool of assets.

Next, the Husband also argues that his liabilities – ie. his credit card debts and loans he had allegedly taken – should be “taken into account”, although he did not specify exactly how that is to be done.⁷

On the facts of the present case, I find that it is neither appropriate to deduct these alleged “debts” from the net matrimonial pool of assets nor should they be taken into account when assessing the Husband’s contributions to the marriage.

I find, on the evidence, that the Husband’s credit card debts were not incurred for the family’s benefit. Although he claims that the Wife’s use of his credit cards caused him to be in debt,⁸ the documents he had exhibited do not support his case; the documents show that the alleged expenditures were incurred in 2017 to 2018, years before the present Divorce Suit was filed.⁹

In my view, the Husband had to resort to spending on credit because he had expended his income on his personal expenses, especially given his penchant for gambling.¹⁰ The Husband’s purchases of lottery tickets,¹¹ visits to the casino and the attempts made to stop him from gambling (including the issuance of a Family Exclusion Order by the National Council on Problem Gambling) are well documented.¹²

I therefore find that these credit card/bank debts were incurred by the Husband after he had left the matrimonial home in 2017 because of his unreasonable and/or profligate spending to which the Wife had no control over; these “debts” should thus not be deducted from the matrimonial pool of assets.

As regards the alleged loans extended by his friends/relatives, the Husband has not shown the purpose of these loans and the context under which they were incurred. In fact, the documents exhibited suggest that the monies were used to pay the Husband’s credit card debts and/or to meet his legal obligation to pay the Wife maintenance.¹³

Similarly, I see no basis for the value of these “loans” to be deducted from the matrimonial pool of assets when they were taken, without the Wife’s involvement, to repay the Husband’s personal legal obligations.

As such, I find that the matrimonial pool of assets is as set out at [10] above.

Preliminary Observations: Division of Assets

Having dealt with what the matrimonial pool of assets consists of, I now move on to deal with the approach the Court should adopt in deciding the appropriate ratio of division.

I start by observing that the Wife’s position on this matter had changed considerably between the initial AM hearing in April 2022 and the subsequent hearing in June 2022.

Counsel for the Wife’s initial position (as set out in the Wife first set of written submissions)¹⁴ was for the “parties to retain the...