XYY v XYZ

Facts

The parties married in Singapore in September 2010 and have two children. The Wife filed for divorce on 21 January 2025, relying on the Husband's unreasonable behaviour, and interim judgment followed in July 2025. With no agreement on the ancillary matters, each side brought an application for disclosure in FC/OAD 356/2025: SUM 2891 of 2025 was the Wife's and SUM 2894 of 2025 the Husband's. An Assistant Registrar of the Family Court heard both on 13 January 2026 and reserved judgment.

Because the divorce was filed after 15 October 2024, the Family Justice (General) Rules 2024 governed. By the hearing the Wife pursued a single item, framed as a request for documents on the arrangement between the Husband and his employer over the use, financing and ownership of a vehicle, but described by her counsel at the hearing as a request for documents showing the vehicle's value. The Husband pursued Items 12, 13, 15 and 16, which sought proof that the Wife alone had paid the rent from 2010 to 2012, her tax assessments for that period, and evidence for financial outlays and domestic helper payments she alleged in her first ancillary matters affidavit.

Issues

1. Whether the materiality test in P 9, r 4 of the Family Justice (General) Rules 2024 differs from the old test of relevance and necessity
2. Whether the Wife's request concerning the vehicle should be granted
3. Whether the Husband's requests in Items 12, 13, 15 and 16 should be granted

Holding

The court made no order on the Wife's sole request in SUM 2891 and no order on Items 12, 13, 15 and 16 in SUM 2894, so neither application succeeded. It ordered the parties to state their positions on costs by letter no later than 3 February 2026, in submissions of at most 3 pages each.

Reasoning

On the test, the court noted that the 2024 Rules replaced relevance and necessity with a requirement that the requested documents be material to the issues. Accepting the Husband's counsel's reliance on O 11 r 3 of the Rules of Court 2021, which it treated as in pari materia, the court applied the civil cases Eng's Wantan Noodle Pte Ltd and another v Eng's Char Siew Wantan Mee Pte Ltd [2023] SGHCR 17 and Cachet Multi Strategy Fund SPC on behalf of Cachet Special Opportunities SP v Feng Shi and others [2024] SGHCR 8, with adjustments for ancillary matters hearings. Materiality is a higher threshold: the applicant must show how the documents would affect the outcome, not merely that bank statements, for example, bear on division or maintenance.

On the Wife's request, the court agreed with the Husband that a party should not reframe a request at the hearing. The new regime demands that requests be properly identified, and a poorly identified request will rarely show materiality. In any case no order was needed: the Husband had stated the vehicle's value in his affidavit, and P 9 r 3 obliges him to disclose the documents supporting that value or give reasons for not doing so.

On the Husband's requests, the same rule applied in reverse. Since each item related to matters the Wife alleged in her own affidavit, P 9 r 3 already required her to produce documents substantiating those allegations or explain why she could not or would not, so no separate order was made.

From the judgment