YAC v YAD

Facts

The parents of two children had agreed, by a consent order made on 11 September 2024, that the Father would pay $1500 a month in total as maintenance for both children. About three months later the Mother filed MSS 25 of 2025 asking the Family Court to raise the figure to $2200 a month.

Her application was first framed around the rising cost of living and the children's growing expenses. At trial she shifted ground: the extra money, she said, was needed to pay for tuition classes she intended to enrol the children in. Both children were already in primary school when the consent order was made. She also said she had accepted the consent order because a mediator had told her she could later apply for more if the amount proved too low. Both parents appeared in person.

Issues

1. Whether the Mother had shown a change in circumstances, or other good cause, justifying an upward variation of the consent maintenance order under s 72 of the Women's Charter 1961.
2. Whether it was reasonable and for the welfare of the children to vary the maintenance agreement under s 73 of the Women's Charter 1961.

Holding

The Magistrate dismissed the Mother's application in MSS 25 of 2025 and left the consent order of $1500 a month unchanged. Neither statutory route to variation was made out. The court encouraged both parents to cooperate in supporting the children's studies.

Reasoning

On s 72, the court held that a change in circumstances must already have happened. The tuition costs had not been incurred and there was no firm evidence they ever would be, so the Mother was pointing only to a possible future change, which the statute does not cover.

No other good cause had been shown either. The order being varied was one the parents had agreed to themselves. The court declined to consider what the mediator had allegedly said, because what passes in mediation is kept away from the trial court, and the decision to sign remained the Mother's own. Relying on TGZ v THA [2019] SGFC 97, the Magistrate stressed that parties are held to bargains they made themselves. Tuition was a foreseeable need when the order was made, since both children were already at primary school, and matters that could have been foreseen at the time of a consent order attract little sympathy (WYH v WYG [2024] SGHCF 34).

On s 73, there was no evidence that tuition was a necessary expense, and the court saw no reason why the parents could not give the children extra academic help themselves. Following VDB v VDC [2019] SGFC 139, the court also rejected the idea that a child's expenses necessarily rise simply because the child is getting older, since spending patterns change at different stages of a child's life.

From the judgment