WJM v WJN

WJM (the Wife), a beautician, and WJN (the Husband), who retired from a corporate job in 2000 because of ill health, married on 11 April 1998 and obtained interim judgment of divorce on 27 April 2021. In FC/ORC 5473/2022, District Judge Goh Zhuo Neng assessed direct contributions at 36.1% for the Husband and 63.9% for the Wife and indirect contributions at 45% and 55%, giving an overall division of 40.55% to the Husband and 59.45% to the Wife. The extracted order stated a different ratio, which the High Court found to be a clerical error. The Wife was also ordered to pay the Husband maintenance of $150.00 a month for a year.

The Wife appealed in District Court Appeal No 109 of 2022. After judgment was reserved, the Husband, who is wheelchair bound and certified disabled, sent an email asking for maintenance for life and challenging the direct contribution figures.

1. Whether the $20,000 Additional Housing Grant should have been split equally instead of credited to the Husband.
2. Whether $14,616 reimbursed in cash from rental income could count as the Husband's CPF contribution, and whether later rental he kept should be set off.
3. Whether the indirect contribution ratio and the maintenance order should be changed.

On the grant, the Husband's admission that he needed a family nucleus to obtain it did not show it was given to both. He said it was paid to his CPF account because the Wife was then not a citizen. The Wife bore the burden of proving error and had not even asked the Housing Development Board, so the questions about the grant were left unanswered.

On the $14,616, the Wife did not dispute that it was a reimbursement for mortgage payments made from her CPF; paying from one account and reimbursing later was common and here the only option, as the Husband's CPF was empty. Her claim to set off rent he kept from 2014 failed: it was legitimately used for his living expenses while unemployed, and accounting for every cent would turn a marriage into a business partnership.

The Husband had been the homemaker since 2001 and helped the Wife settle in Singapore, so the indirect ratio stood. The maintenance order was reasonable. The Husband's email was improper, made without leave, without a cross-appeal and without copying the Wife, and in any event showed no material change in circumstances.

The court dismissed the Wife's appeal, affirming the division of matrimonial assets and the maintenance order of $150.00 a month. It also rejected the arguments in the Husband's email.