Wong Suit Kam v Tan Beng Wah Benny

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judgment Date: 29 March 2006
• Date: 29 March 2006
• Docket Number: Divorce Petition No 1353 of 2004
• Court: High Court (Singapore)

Wong Suit Kam

Plaintiff

and

Tan Beng Wah Benny

Defendant

[2006] SGHC 56

Judith Prakash J

Divorce Petition No 1353 of 2004

High Court

Family Law–Matrimonial assets–Division–Wife and husband having competing claims as regards division of matrimonial property–Applicable principles for determining equitable distribution of assets–Family Law–Maintenance–Wife–Applicable principles for determining appropriate amount of maintenance

The petitioner (“the wife”) and the respondent (“the husband”) were parties to an extremely acrimonious divorce. Following the grant of the decree nisi, ancillary matters relating to the distribution of matrimonial property and maintenance were left to be decided by the court.

The parties had competing claims as regards various properties held jointly or acquired as a result of the marriage. These included an HDB flat (“the matrimonial home”), a terraced house in Johor Baru (“the JB property”), and an apartment in Serangoon (“the apartment”).

Both parties claimed to have paid for the matrimonial home using personal funds in addition to their Central Provident Fund (“CPF”) moneys. They also asserted having, separately, paid for renovations to the home. The husband claimed to have paid for the JB property, in part, from moneys from a joint account and the rest through a loan. The wife claimed she had also contributed towards the purchase of the JB property by paying the loan instalments. Further, she alleged that the husband's loan for the purchase of the JB property was lower than the amount he claimed and that the husband had collected rent from the JB property and kept it from her. In respect of the apartment property, the wife did not dispute that that she had not contributed at all to its purchase.

Held, making the consequential orders:

(1) Both parties contributed to the acquisition of the matrimonial home. Neither party, however, furnished evidence of any renovation they allegedly paid for in respect of the home. There was also little evidence to show that moneys other than from the couple's CPF accounts were used to finance the purchase of the house. Based on the deductions from the CPF accounts, the husband contributed approximately 68% of the cost of the home, and the wife contributed the remaining 32%: at [4] to [7].

(2) There was little by way of evidence to determine where the funds to purchase the JB property came from. There were no cheques nor did the husband produce the loan agreement he said he entered into. Based on their relative incomes at the material times, the wife could not have contributed as much as she alleged she did. This was especially so given she also claimed to have spent a tidy sum on renovating the matrimonial home. She was not well informed about the expenses related to the JB property and did not know where it was located. On the balance of probabilities, the husband had paid substantially for the JB property: at [9] to [11].

(3) Under the present regime governing division of matrimonial assets (s 112 of the Women's Charter (Cap 353, 1997 Rev Ed)), the court had to consider all the circumstances of the case when deciding what would be a just and equitable division between the parties of the matrimonial assets or the proceeds of their sale. The financial contributions made by each party to the acquisition of the assets constituted only one of the factors to be taken into account. Among the other factors were the extent of the contributions made by each party to the welfare of the family, the giving of assistance or support by one party to the other, the ages of the parties and duration of the marriage and the income, earning capacity, property and other financial resources which each of the parties to the marriage had or was likely to have had in the foreseeable future as well as any physical disability that either party might be under: at [23].

(4) Taking all the circumstances into account, in particular, the length of the marriage, the fact that the husband had prevented the wife from occupying the matrimonial home for some time, the efforts that the wife had made to support herself and the family as well as the husband's contributions to her care and that of the family and to the acquisition of the matrimonial assets, it would be equitable in this case to make a distribution of the matrimonial assets between the husband and the wife in the ratio of 55:45: at [38].

(5) On the issue of maintenance, the wife's claim appeared rather high. Once the matrimonial home was conveyed, some of the rooms could be rented out for supplemental income. Maintenance to the tune of $1,200 a month was a reasonable figure. Bearing in mind the husband's liabilities as regards the mortgages over his properties, it would be reasonable to award lump sum maintenance for ten years in view of the ages of the parties and their health and respective income-earning capacities. On that basis, the wife would get $144,000 in maintenance: at [42].

Women's Charter (Cap 353, 1997 Rev Ed) s 112

Koh Sian Ann (Tan & Au Partnership) for the petitioner

Fong Weng Khai (WK Fong & Co) for the respondent.

Judgment reserved.

Judith Prakash J

Introduction

1 The parties were married on 12 December 1971. By the time the decree nisi was granted on 5 October 2004 on the basis that the parties had lived separately and apart for a period of at least four years, they had been married for almost 33 years. They are both now 59 years of age. As the two children of the marriage, both sons, are in their thirties, the ancillary matters before me relate only to the distribution of the matrimonial property and the maintenance of the wife.

2 The husband worked throughout the marriage until his retirement in December 2001. He was first a secondary school teacher, then an officer in the army (for three years while he served full-time National Service) and then a teacher again until his retirement. The wife was also a working woman through much of the marriage. She was not as well educated as the husband and did not earn as much. At various times she worked as a production supervisor, a charge hand, a cook, a member of the kitchen crew in a café and as a canteen vendor. She stopped work in 2000.

3 The divorce was extremely acrimonious. The wife had originally petitioned for divorce on the ground of the husband's unreasonable behaviour. He had then responded with an answer and a cross-petition, also on the ground of unreasonable behaviour. It was only subsequently, in the course of the pre-trial proceedings, that the parties agreed that the wife should proceed with her petition on a different ground. Reflecting the parties' disgruntlement and disillusionment with each other, however, the affidavits filed for the ancillary matters contained numerous complaints about each other's behaviour. Deciding how much credence should be given to these unpleasant allegations was one of the more difficult tasks I faced in coming to this decision.

The matrimonial assets

Joint assets

4 The matrimonial home at Block 323, Jurong East Street 31, #12-210 (“the home”) is owned by both parties in joint names. It is a Housing & Development Board (“HDB”) executive apartment that was purchased in 1985 for $114,000. As at the date of the hearing, the loan taken out to buy the home had been paid up in full. The current value of the home has not been determined. According to the wife, a list of resale transactions posted on the Internet by the HDB in July 2005 showed that in June 2005, a similar unit in the same block had been sold for $337,000 whilst a marginally bigger unit in a different block had been sold for $305,000. On this basis, the wife estimated the value of the home to be in the region of $330,000. The husband considered that the highest possible resale price obtainable for the home would be $370,000 but offered no evidence to support this assertion.

5 Both parties contributed financially to the acquisition of the home. The husband asserted that as at 30 March 2005, he had utilised the sum of $97,099.47 from his Central Provident Fund (“CPF”) account towards its purchase. He had also obtained a renovation loan of $28,000 from the Ministry of Education and had repaid it over a period of ten years with interest at 6% per annum. The total amount repaid by him was $36,600. According to the husband, a sum of $22,000 was utilised from the joint bank account of the parties to pay for the furniture and fittings. He said he had deposited all the money in the account. This was an assertion denied by the wife who herself claimed to have deposited all funds put into the joint account. The husband further said that over 20 years, he had paid about $14,400 in conservancy fees and $12,000 in property taxes. He produced only one property tax bill, however, and this did not support a figure of $600 a year for property tax. It showed that for the calendar year 2003, the property tax payable in respect of the home was $151.60 after deduction of $100 for the goods and services tax (“GST”) rebate. If the GST rebate is not taken into account, then the most that the husband would have paid for property tax between 1985 and 2005 would have been $5,032.

6 The wife asserted that as of December 2004, she had paid $44,469 from her CPF account towards the purchase of the home: she had contributed some $200 odd towards the loan instalment whilst the balance of $400 odd had been paid by the husband. From April 2002, when the husband's CPF account ran out of funds, she had had to pay the entire amount of the instalment. In early 2004, the husband starting giving her $500 a month in cash as his contribution for the mortgage but he had stopped this payment in June 2004 when she filed the divorce petition. Thereafter she had paid the full instalment plus the conservancy and utility charges. The wife, additionally, relied on funds derived from the sale of the parties' first matrimonial...