XNG v XNH

The applicant wife and the respondent husband had resolved their matrimonial dispute by a consent order recorded in 2023. The wife later applied in HCF/OADTV 4 of 2025 to vary that consent order. Choo Han Teck J dismissed that application in a judgment of 23 May 2025, but gave her liberty to apply for a Mareva injunction if there was cause to believe the husband might dispose of his assets to her detriment.

The wife then filed Summons 266 of 2025 for a Mareva injunction restraining the husband from disposing of assets up to S$7,564,092.50. The judge granted the injunction in a judgment of 5 February 2026. The parties could not agree on costs, and this short judgment decides that question.

The wife asked for costs of S$40,000 (excluding GST and disbursements) on an indemnity basis. Her counsel pointed to Appendix G of the Supreme Court Directions 2021, said costs for an injunction normally ran between S$10,000 and S$35,000, and argued for the upper end because her lawyers had gone through seven affidavits and almost 4,000 pages of documents. She said indemnity costs were justified because the husband had acted in bad faith to diminish what was due to her. The husband's counsel said he had been making regular payments, that the summons was only partly successful because the main prayers aimed at stopping the sale of a property at Cable Road were not granted, and that no costs should be ordered in the interests of therapeutic justice.

1. Whether the respondent's conduct justified costs on an indemnity basis rather than the standard basis
2. What amount of costs was appropriate for the Mareva injunction application
3. Whether the principle of therapeutic justice meant that no costs should be ordered

On indemnity costs, the judge explained that outside a contractual entitlement such costs are reserved for conduct so unreasonable that it puts the other side to unnecessary expense, citing the English Court of Appeal's description of the required conduct as unreasonable to a high degree and of indemnity costs as penal in nature. Although the husband's repeated payment defaults were described as reprehensible and unacceptable, and had forced the wife into several enforcement steps, the judge considered that standard costs adequately covered her legal expenses without a punitive element.

On quantum, a principal prayer had been granted, so costs on the standard basis followed. The application was not complicated, even though both sides filed substantial affidavits and submissions, so costs at the lower end of the usual range were enough.

On therapeutic justice, the judge described it as a concept rather than a rule of law: a way of administering the law to reduce acrimony and bring forgiveness, empathy and magnanimity into family disputes. It works only if the parties embrace it. Here the dispute had first been settled by the 2023 consent order, but the husband's attempt to change the agreed terms reopened it and the issues had to be decided by strict application of legal principles. The court accepted that family courts have a wide discretion not to order costs, for instance where parties are not well-to-do, but this was not such a case. Having abandoned the agreed therapeutic path and forced the wife into costly litigation, the husband could not invoke therapeutic justice to escape costs.

The court allowed the wife's costs claim in part. It ordered the respondent husband to pay the applicant wife costs of S$10,000 plus reasonable disbursements, on the standard basis. It refused indemnity costs and rejected the plea that no costs be ordered on therapeutic justice grounds.