A man who was awarded 95 per cent of nearly $23 million in matrimonial assets in 2025 has filed an appeal against the High Court decision, according to written grounds issued recently.
The husband had contended that most of the assets held in his name or jointly with his children from a previous marriage should be excluded from the pool of matrimonial assets.
He argued that the assets had been acquired before the current marriage or bought with funds earned before it.
However, this claim was rejected by Justice Pang Khang Chau, who included $22.4 million worth of the man’s assets in the matrimonial pool.
These included a property in Stevens Close, another property in Tudor Close, and money in multiple bank accounts.
The wife’s assets amounted to more than $503,000.
The judge valued the matrimonial pool at $22.9 million and divided it in the ratio of 95:5 in the husband’s favour.
This meant that his share was $21.8 million, while the wife’s was $1.1 million.
To implement the division, the judge ordered the husband to transfer more than $624,000 to the wife.
In his written grounds issued on June 3, Pang said the man has since appealed against the decision.
The judge wrote that it was true that a large portion of the matrimonial assets consisted of, or was derived from, the husband’s pre-marriage monies.
However, most of these monies had become “irreversibly” mixed with the matrimonial assets, meaning it was not possible to trace the source of the funds.
“Hence, the road to achieving a just and equitable result was not to exclude these commingled assets wholesale, but rather to include all of them in the matrimonial pool and then divide the pool in a way which recognised the husband’s financial contributions,” the judge said.
The couple married in October 2016 and have a daughter. After the man filed for divorce in 2022, interim judgment was granted in July that year.
The husband was 59 years old at the time of the hearing in 2025 to determine the division of assets and spousal maintenance.
The former project manager, who retired in May 2018, has two adult daughters from his previous marriage.
The wife, who was 39 years old at the time of the hearing, was previously an engineer and marketing manager in China.
She became a housewife after marrying the man in Singapore. In 2021, she began working as a fitness trainer.
They reached an agreement in 2022 on matters pertaining to their daughter, of whom they have joint custody.
The child lives with the husband, who financially supports her, while the wife has been granted access.
The husband had sought to exclude a list of assets from the matrimonial pool.
He argued that the Stevens Close property was bought in 2013, before the marriage, and that the mortgage payments made during the marriage were funded by money he had earned before the marriage.
The judge agreed that the mortgage payments between October 2016 and April 2018 came solely from pre-marriage monies.
But he said the husband could not prove the same for payments made from April 2018 onwards due to the mixing of funds in the man’s bank accounts.
The judge therefore included only the portion of the property that was paid with commingled funds, valued at just under $1.5 million.
The Tudor Close property was bought during the marriage in August 2019, fully funded by the man. It was registered in the name of his eldest daughter, who is in her 30s.
Pang rejected the husband’s argument that he had bought the property as a gift for her because she was starting her own family.
The judge noted that the husband, the wife and their daughter lived there without needing permission from the eldest daughter, and that the man and his youngest daughter continued to live there even after his eldest daughter and her family moved out.
This showed that the husband “retained control and dominion over the property” and was its true beneficial owner.
Pang adopted the wife’s valuation of $7.5 million for the Tudor Close property as the husband did not submit one.
The judge also included in the matrimonial pool the full sums of various bank accounts held solely by the husband.
For accounts that the man held jointly with his children, only half of the balances was included.
In dividing the matrimonial assets, the judge recognised that the husband’s direct contribution was 100 per cent of the entire sum.
He also assessed the ratio of indirect contributions at 80:20 in the husband’s favour.
The judge said the husband’s non-financial contributions to the family clearly outweighed those of the wife, who made at least three unannounced trips to China for as long as two months at a time.
The final ratio was adjusted to 95:5 to reflect that a substantial portion of the matrimonial pool consisted of the husband’s pre-marriage assets.
The judge also ordered the husband to continue paying the wife spousal support of $1,800 a month for six months from the date of his decision in 2025 on the division of assets and spousal support.
In 2023, the wife had sought spousal maintenance of $20,000 a month, pending the conclusion of the divorce proceedings.
But a district judge decided that $1,800 was an appropriate sum, after assessing her reasonable monthly expenses to be about $5,400 and her earning capacity to be about $3,600.
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This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.
