YAI v YAJ

Facts

Under a consent order, the Father had to pay the Mother, as care parent, $400 a month for their daughter and $300 a month for their older son. The Father had care of the younger son. He did not pay either sum from October 2023 to March 2026, and the Mother brought enforcement proceedings in MSS No. 1268 of 2025 before District Judge Kow Keng Siong in the Family Court.

The Father argued that he owed nothing for the daughter, who turned 21 on 31 January 2024. She was in a diploma course, which ended in October 2025, and was paid during a work attachment within the course. For the older son, he said the boy had mostly lived at his apartment and that he had paid the boy's expenses directly, including by letting the sons use his ATM card while he was overseas.

Issues

1. Whether the Father had to keep maintaining his adult daughter while she studied and was paid during a work attachment
2. Whether the Father could stop paying the older son's maintenance to the Mother because he paid the boy's expenses directly

Holding

The court allowed the enforcement application in part, finding total arrears of $14,480: $9,980 for the daughter and $4,500, being half the ordered sum, for the older son. The arrears were ordered to be paid in four monthly instalments of $3,620, with show-payment mentions and default terms of imprisonment. Current maintenance of $300 a month for the older son continued, and the Father was ordered to pay $3,000 in costs.

Reasoning

The Father failed to prove, beyond his own account of what the daughter had told him, that she earned $2,200 a month on attachment. The court accepted the Mother's figure of about $600 a month over roughly three months. Section 69(5)(c) of the Women's Charter lets a court order maintenance for an adult child in education or training whether or not the child is working, provided maintenance is necessary. Although the provision governs new orders, the court treated it as relevant to whether a defaulting parent has a good reason. Payment during an attachment that formed part of her course did not make her gainfully employed. The Father did not show that $600 covered both her attachment expenses and her keep. He was therefore liable for the whole period, less $320 he had sent her that the Mother did not dispute.

For the older son, the court found that both parents had contributed, since the boy moved between their homes and used the Father's card for daily expenses. The Father's claim of spending $4,230 a month on him was unsupported and implausible, and the card records did not show who used them or for what. Taking a broad-brush approach, the court required the Father to pay half the ordered amount. It stressed that a paying parent cannot replace the mode of payment set by a court order with an arrangement of his own, and that costs were ordered to reinforce compliance, not to punish.

From the judgment