WZF v WZG

The wife, a Malaysian citizen working in Singapore on an employment pass, and the husband, an Australian citizen, married in June 2015 in Australia and have one child, now six. The husband moved out of the rented family home in July 2022. On 27 March 2023 the wife began divorce proceedings and the parties agreed interim access by consent order; interim judgment was granted on 16 November 2023. In Divorce (Transferred) No 1420 of 2023, the High Court (Family Division) decided custody, access, division of assets and maintenance.

The husband first declared assets of a few bank accounts and said he owned no shares. Through her own searches the wife produced records of a multi-jurisdictional group of companies in which he held interests, including an Indonesian company with paid-up capital of about S$12m in which he held over 80%, as well as a family trust, an endowment fund he closed after the writ, further bank accounts and insurance policies. A discovery order was made on 5 July 2024, but his responding affidavit disclosed little and he urged the court to value the companies at nothing.

1. Whether the wife should have sole custody or a veto power, and what access the husband should have.
2. Whether an adverse inference should be drawn for non-disclosure and how to give effect to it, by quantification, uplift or both.
3. How the matrimonial pool should be divided under the structured approach.
4. What child maintenance should be ordered, whether as a lump sum, and whether backdated; and whether spousal maintenance was warranted.

Joint custody is the norm even amid acrimony; the husband's limited involvement and a single delay over the child's passport were not exceptional, and a veto power would undermine joint custody. Supervised access, usually by the wife's mother with whom he had a poor relationship, was unhelpful, but the husband's sporadic record made his proposed 12 hours a week too sudden, so access was set with a review after 30 July 2025.

The court found the husband had set out to hide his assets at every turn, so the conditions for an adverse inference in BPC v BPB and another appeal [2019] 1 SLR 608 were met. Following WRX v WRY and another matter [2024] 1 SLR 851, it used both approaches together. Using paid-up capital as the only available proxy, it added S$10,054,716 for the Indonesian shareholding; he bore the risk of overvaluation. Because the other entities could not be valued, it also gave the wife a further 10% uplift. Under ANJ v ANK [2015] 4 SLR 1043, the added sum was not credited to the husband as his contribution; indirect contributions favoured the wife, and direct contributions were given greater weight because the pool was large.

The child's reasonable expenses were S$3,700 a month excluding school fees, with most enrichment classes, dining and travel disallowed. The husband's claimed income of S$7,500 was a bare assertion, so equal sharing applied. A lump sum was refused because both parents would stay involved and expenses would change. Maintenance was backdated to September 2022, when he stopped paying. The wife earned about S$14,800 a month and received a large share of assets, so no spousal maintenance was ordered.

The court ordered joint custody with sole care and control to the wife and four hours of unsupervised Saturday access for the husband, and ordered the husband to transfer S$6,955,229 to the wife within six months, giving her 69% of the pool. It ordered child maintenance of S$1,850 a month plus half the school fees, and a lump sum of S$81,520 backdated maintenance, and declined spousal maintenance.