XHG v XHH

Facts

The husband, an Irish citizen and Singapore Permanent Resident working as a managing director at a multinational investment bank, and the wife, a Singapore citizen and banker, married on 19 October 2013. The husband began divorce proceedings on 21 February 2022 and interim judgment was granted on 18 October 2022. They have a daughter and a son; by a consent order dated 13 November 2024 they share joint custody, with care and control to the wife. In Divorce (Transferred) No 706 of 2022 the High Court (Family Division) decided the remaining ancillary matters: division of matrimonial assets and maintenance for the wife and the children.

Many assets were disputed, including Irish properties, share units, CPF balances, a bonus, money the husband spent on hair implants and a piano after proceedings began, an account the wife said she held for her father, and S$100,000 the wife transferred to a friend, G, which she and G said was an investment in G's café business.

Issues

1. Whether contested items, including post-filing spending and the S$100,000 transfer, belonged in the matrimonial pool.
2. Whether the wife's pre-marriage CPF savings and insurance policies should be excluded in whole or part.
3. How the pool should be divided and whether adverse inferences or uplifts were warranted.
4. What maintenance should be paid to the wife and the children, including backdated sums.

Holding

The court ordered the matrimonial assets to be divided in the husband's favour at fifty-three to forty-seven, and ordered the husband to pay the wife a lump sum of S$144,000 in backdated maintenance, S$4,819 monthly for the children until they turn 21, and S$17,000 in backdated child maintenance. Standard costs of the ancillary proceedings, and indemnity costs thrown away for work on his late affidavit, were ordered against the husband.

Reasoning

On the pool, the court found the husband had not dissipated his May 2022 bonus, since his late-disclosed statements accounted for it. But he had spent on hair implants and a new piano without the wife's consent after filing, so those sums went back in; his serviced-apartment rent after the wife changed the locks was reasonable. The wife's S$120,981.28 from her father's flat sale was her father's money, but she had not shown that a further S$77,730 was his. The court disbelieved the account of the café investment, given that there was no documentation or share transfer, and returned the S$100,000 to the pool. Money she spent furnishing her mother's flat also went back in.

Following USB v USA [2020] 2 SLR 588, only the share of the wife's insurance policies acquired during the marriage was included. Her pre-marriage CPF moneys stayed in, for consistency with the bank balances, to avoid a windfall.

Applying ANJ v ANK [2015] 4 SLR 1043 to a dual-income marriage, the court took direct contributions from the figures, found indirect contributions roughly equal, and gave the two equal weight. No uplift was given to the husband for rent or the wife's spending. His lack of full and frank disclosure was unacceptable, but without prima facie evidence of concealment, AZZ v BAA [2016] SGHC 44 did not support an adverse inference; it went to costs instead.

On maintenance, S$6,000 a month for the wife was reasonable while she was unemployed. The children's reasonable expenses were assessed item by item, trimming items such as twice-yearly holiday camps, and shared according to earning capacity.

From the judgment