XTR v XTQ

Facts

The parties married on 25 January 2004 in India and have no children. They lived in different countries for much of the marriage: the husband worked in Japan from early 2014 and moved to the US at the end of 2022, while the wife largely stayed in Singapore. In June 2018 they agreed to a three-month trial separation, and they disputed whether they reconciled afterwards.

The husband started divorce proceedings in India on 5 August 2023, alleging cruelty and abandonment. On 29 April 2024 the wife filed for judicial separation in Singapore, relying on the husband's unreasonable behaviour. After a one-day trial, the District Judge granted judicial separation on 28 August 2025 and ordered the husband to pay S$8,000 (all-in) costs. The District Judge found that the parties had not separated after 2018, and that throughout 2023 the husband had led the wife to believe he would apply for a US dependent pass for her when he did not genuinely intend to, and had concealed his true intentions. The District Judge also said a less rigorous and stringent approach applies to unreasonable behaviour in judicial separation cases, following USC v USD. The husband appealed in District Court Appeal No 108 of 2025.

Issues

1. Whether a less stringent threshold applies in assessing unreasonable behaviour in judicial separation proceedings than in divorce proceedings
2. Whether the parties had already separated since the 2018 trial separation
3. Whether the husband's conduct over the US visa application was unreasonable
4. Whether the husband's conduct, individually or cumulatively, meant the wife could not reasonably be expected to live with him

Holding

The High Court dismissed the husband's appeal in its entirety and upheld the judgment of judicial separation, although it held that the District Judge erred in law on the threshold and on the test for unreasonable behaviour. The husband was ordered to pay the wife the costs of the appeal, fixed at S$6,000 all-in.

Reasoning

On the threshold, the court held that USC v USD was wrong. Nothing in the history of the judicial separation provisions or the parliamentary debates suggested it should be easier to obtain than divorce. A judgment of judicial separation is not merely temporary: it triggers the court's powers to divide matrimonial assets and order maintenance and changes intestate succession. A looser test would also undercut the three-year bar on divorce and could let a judgment of judicial separation stand as proof of grounds for divorce under s 102(2). The same test and standard of proof apply to both. The necessary modifications in s 101(1) mean only that the court need not find the marriage has irretrievably broken down, and adjust nomenclature. The court also held that the unreasonable behaviour test has no subjective intolerability element: that wording belongs to the adultery fact, and Wong Siew Boey and the English authorities it relied on frame the test objectively, taking account of the particular parties.

On separation, the court found no reason to disturb the finding that the parties reconciled. Regular personal messages, the husband's apologies for slow replies, his updates on investments and a car purchase, the wife calling herself his wife without correction, and her stated plan to leave him her property all pointed to a continuing marriage.

On the visa issue, the husband admitted he kept giving the impression he was working on the application, and even after filing for divorce in India he discussed photographs and lawyers for it. The court agreed this misled the wife and would have caused a deep sense of betrayal.

On the cumulative question, the court added that his refusal to disclose his US address, his undisclosed termination of a life insurance policy naming her as beneficiary, and giving her contact details to moneylenders without warning showed a pattern of secretive behaviour that, together with the visa issue, justified the finding.

From the judgment