KEE CHEONG KENG v DINH THI THU HIEN

Facts

The plaintiff was the mother of a man (the Deceased) who married the defendant, a Vietnamese citizen, on 14 May 2013 in Singapore. The Deceased died intestate on 18 June 2017, leaving an HDB flat in his sole name. Because he was still legally married to the defendant, the plaintiff could not apply for a grant of letters of administration of his estate. In May 2022 she brought Suit No 4 of 2022 in the General Division of the High Court (Family Division) to nullify the marriage as a sham.

Her case was that the Deceased told the family at a dinner in 2013 that he had entered a sham marriage arranged by marriage agents, in exchange for a downpayment and monthly payments that the defendant later stopped making. The defendant was served by substituted service through a Vietnamese newspaper advertisement, but did not respond, and was absent and unrepresented at trial. The court allowed the plaintiff to amend her prayers, since a civil suit could only decide the validity of the marriage and not the grant of letters of administration.

Issues

1. Whether the marriage between the Deceased and the defendant was a sham marriage
2. Whether a sham marriage solemnised before 1 October 2016 could be declared void under the Women's Charter

Holding

The court found the marriage to be a sham and allowed the plaintiff's prayer to declare the marriage void. It ordered the defendant to pay the plaintiff $10,000 in costs and directed that the parties' names not be redacted, in case the defendant found the report and wished to challenge the verdict.

Reasoning

On the first issue, the court was satisfied on a balance of probabilities that the marriage was not genuine. The couple had lived apart throughout, no family member had met the defendant, there was no wedding celebration and no photographs of the two together, and the family did not know who the witnesses were. The court inferred that the marriage was meant to let the defendant stay in Singapore, while it gave the then-unemployed Deceased a monetary benefit.

On the second issue, the marriage pre-dated 1 October 2016 and so did not fall within the definition of a marriage of convenience under s 11A(1), and could not be voided under s 105(aa). Following Gian Bee Choo and others v Meng Xianhui [2019] 5 SLR 812, the court held that contracting immigration-advantage sham marriages was against public policy even before s 11A. It also reasoned that the parties had made a false declaration under s 16 when obtaining the marriage licence, by not declaring that the marriage breached penal laws, so the marriage was void under s 105(a) read with s 13(a). Public policy, the risk of State benefits being exploited, and the interests of the estate's beneficiaries and of the plaintiff as an occupier of the flat all supported declaring the marriage void. The court declined counsel's invitation to call the marriage "shambolic", since there was no sign of a valid marriage at all.

From the judgment