WQP v WQQ

Facts

The husband (WQP) and the wife (WQQ) married on 5 May 2010 in Hong Kong and have two children, aged 13 and 10 at the hearing. Interim judgment of divorce was granted uncontested on the basis of both parties' unreasonable behaviour, and the ancillary matters in Divorce (Transferred) No 1572 of 2020 were heard on 28 September 2023 by Mavis Chionh Sze Chyi J.

The husband, a former banker who semi-retired at the end of 2013, earns around S$2,640.83 a month as a part-time director and receives rent from a Los Angeles apartment held in both names. The wife is a Chief Corporate Officer with Company J; she said her salary fell from S$12,000 to S$6,000 from 1 July 2021, which the husband disputed.

The parties agreed on joint custody. The husband sought shared care and control with overnight access; the wife sought sole care and control and opposed overnight or overseas access. The husband argued that 86% of his Hong Kong account funds, and the assets bought from them, came from pre-marital wealth, so only 14% belonged in the pool. Both sides challenged a joint valuer's valuation of the wife's Company J shares, and each alleged dissipation by the other.

Issues

1. Whether the husband should have shared care and control, and whether his access should include overnight and overseas access.
2. Whether the husband could exclude most of his assets as traceable to pre-marital wealth, and how disputed assets should be valued.
3. Whether assets should be added back for dissipation, and how the pool should be divided.
4. What maintenance should be ordered for the wife and the children.

Holding

The court ordered joint custody with sole care and control to the wife, and access for the husband including overnight access from Friday 6.00pm to Saturday 6.00pm and overnight and overseas access in his half of the school holidays. It divided the S$13,239,640.90 pool 55.16% to the husband and 44.84% to the wife, ordered the husband to transfer S$1,024,495.79 to the wife, and ordered the Los Angeles apartment sold within six months with net proceeds shared in that ratio. No maintenance was ordered for the wife; the husband was ordered to pay S$2,980 a month for both children. Each party bears its own costs, with liberty to apply.

Reasoning

The husband's proposal did not differ in substance from sole care and control with access, little weight is given to the signalling effect of a shared order, joint custody met his concern, and the parties' acrimony weighed against shared care. The wife gave no reason against overnight access, and having let the husband take the children overseas in 2019 and 2020, her complaints about those trips showed at most momentary lapses.

The court rejected the 86:14 argument. Under CLC v CLB [2023] 1 SLR 1260 the husband bore the burden of tracing, and that case's point on commingling concerned gifts and inheritances, not pre-marital assets. Without bank statements from 2011 onwards his ratio was unreliable, and by his own account he spent around S$744,946 from those accounts on family expenses. The apartment, registered as community property with right of survivorship, went in fully at the wife's valuation of USD$1,598,700, taken from a dated listing in the same block. USD$650,000 the husband received from Company T was accepted as a return of investment. The wife's Company J shares, acquired in 2019 while the parties still lived together, were included at the joint valuer's USD$2,697,755, both sides' criticisms being rejected.

The court added back the VND$5.281 billion proceeds of a Vietnam property bought during the marriage. The husband said it was a gift to his mother, but he had no objective evidence of pre-marital funding, and the proceeds went to his family without the wife's knowledge when divorce was imminent. The wife's late allegations about his outflows were given no weight. His allegations against her were overstated, as Hong Kong dollar sums had been shown as Singapore dollars, and her withdrawals were mostly small and supported by business records.

Direct contributions were 70.32% to the husband and 29.68% to the wife. Indirect contributions were 40% and 60%: the court recognised the wife's care of the young children and her move to Singapore for his career, but found the husband paid most household expenses until 2019 to 2020 and was a documented stay-home parent. Equal weighting gave the final ratio. Given her share and income, the wife needed no maintenance, and the children's reasonable expenses were shared equally.

From the judgment