YDD v YDE

Facts

The plaintiff wife and the defendant husband married on 5 January 2014 and have three children. Interim judgment dissolving the marriage was granted on 7 January 2025 in Divorce No 905 of 2024. The wife, a financial advisor, acted in person; the husband, a private hire driver, was represented by counsel.

Both parents sought care and control of all three children. The wife said she had been their primary caregiver and that she had obtained personal protection orders for herself and the eldest child against the husband in 2021. She alleged that he breached the order by caning the eldest child, and the children had stopped visiting him after a police report in March 2025. The husband said the wife did not supervise the children, left them on their devices, kept a cluttered home because of hoarding tendencies, and that a teacher had called him to say two of the children were sleeping in class. The court called for a Custody Evaluation Report and sought clarifications on it before deciding the ancillary matters on 23 January 2026. The wife appealed (HCF/DCA 8 of 2026) against the orders on care and control, access and child maintenance, and these grounds explain those orders.

Issues

1. Whether care and control of the three children should be given to the husband or the wife
2. What access the parent without care and control should have
3. How much child maintenance should be paid and in what proportion between the parents

Holding

The Family Court ordered joint custody, with care and control to the husband from the start of February 2026, and gave the wife alternate weekend overnight access, up to 2 weekday evenings a week, half of the June and November/December school holidays, Chinese New Year Day 2 and alternate public holidays except Christmas. It ordered the wife to pay monthly child maintenance of $1,190: $450, $515 and $225 for the three children.

Reasoning

On care and control, the court applied the welfare principle in s 126(2) of the Women's Charter 1961 and relied on the custody evaluation report with the caution urged in WKM v WKN [2024] SGCA 1. It found both parents loving but with different styles: the wife permissive and passive, the husband firmer and more actively supervising. The children urgently needed a stable routine, regular bedtimes and close adult supervision; the home was cluttered with little room to sleep or study, screen time was unlimited, and the children had gone to school or left home unsupervised. The court did not find the children fearful of the husband or the safety allegations made out, and noted the wife's own clarification that the family had been stepped down to a Family Service Centre. It told the husband he must develop more suitable discipline methods for the eldest child. The court stressed the change did not discount the wife's efforts and sacrifices.

On access, the court gave the wife generous time, largely tracking the proposals she made at the hearing, including overnight weekends on an alternate basis and flexible weekday evenings to suit her sales work.

On maintenance, since the husband now claimed, the court generally accepted his lower figures for disputed items, finding the reasonable monthly expenses to be $726, $831 and $365. It rejected his one-third to two-thirds split. It did not accept his declared income of $4,200, working from his private hire driver income statements to average earnings of $4,941.28 over four weeks, and found his monthly income more likely $5,000. Against the wife's undisputed $8,300, the expenses were shared 38% by the husband and 62% by the wife.

From the judgment