WUP v WUQ

Case Significance

WUP v WUQ [2024] SGHCF 15 was decided in the General Division of the High Court (Family Division) on 27 February 2024, with judgment delivered by Choo Han Teck J after a hearing on 19 February 2024 in Divorce Transferred No 1584 of 2023. The case concerned the division of matrimonial assets and maintenance for the wife following a short marriage. According to the judgment, the plaintiff was a 58-year-old Singaporean widower with two adult children when he met the defendant, a Taiwanese national, through a dating agency in Taiwan in October 2018. After a year of long-distance relationship, the defendant moved to Singapore in late November 2019, and the parties married on 1 December 2019. The judgment records that the marriage broke down within less than two years. The plaintiff was described as a manager earning $66,619.53 a month with take-home pay of $44,857.67, while the defendant, who held a bachelor's degree in costume design, had no known job and was not employed during her time in Singapore. The judgment notes that on 28 May 2020 the defendant returned to Taiwan. The plaintiff was represented by Madeleine Poh of Yeo & Associates LLC. The case addressed how matrimonial assets should be divided and whether maintenance was payable to the wife in the circumstances of the brief marriage.