Being treated as his wife’s personal driver. Having to make small talk with her family members. Eating food he hated. Doing household chores alone. And the list goes on.
This Singaporean man, 31, an accounts executive, claimed that married life became so unbearable that he was driven to depression.
Because he had been married for less than three years, he couldn’t file for a divorce unless he could show that he had suffered exceptional hardship.
So the man provided examples of the things he claimed he had to endure.
But District Judge Shobha G Nair dismissed his application, saying that some of the reasons he gave were “trivial”.
The judge noted that the phrase “exceptional hardship” was defined as “something quite out of the ordinary and more than what an ordinary person should reasonably be asked to bear”.
She said she couldn’t conclude that the marriage was causing the husband exceptional hardship if it were to continue.
Neither was there any exceptional depravity on the wife’s part.
The husband, who is represented by lawyer Mr S K Kumar, has filed an appeal against the decision.
His wife is a businesswoman in her mid-30s.
The court heard that the couple continued to live with their respective parents after they registered their marriage on Oct 23, 2008.
On April 21, 2009, the wife’s parents hosted a wedding reception for them.
Four days later, the couple had their customary wedding ceremony. That same day, they started to live together at an apartment in Normanton that was owned by the wife’s parents.
Although the wife’s parents did not live there, they would sometimes stay over.
The husband claimed that he suffered after the customary wedding ceremony and alleged that his wife’s parents meddled in their lives.
For instance, his wife’s father insisted on the date for the customary wedding even though he and his mother were uncomfortable with the choice.
And his father-in-law’s offer to him of a director’s post in the family company was something he saw as coercive.
The man also complained that his wife did not respect his religious beliefs.
He said she kept his passport after they went on a trip to Thailand, preventing him from further personal travel for prayers.
He felt that she treated him as her personal driver, expecting him to drive her from their apartment to her parents’ home before he could head to work.
He also had to drive her to the gym and wait “aimlessly for hours” while she was there.
Besides that, he was made to chat with her family members, have dinner with them and watch drama serials with her, which resulted in late nights.
He had to eat food he didn’t like although he had certain “dietary concerns”.
The man said that when his wife told him her father’s business was running into financial difficulties, he felt even more stressed.
He was worried he would be involved in legal suits as he had signed on some documents before resigning from the company.
Adding to his stress was his wife’s move to stop paying for the home they had jointly bought – a property in Bishan that was valued at $643,000.
All these led him to feel demoralised and depressed, he said.
A consultant psychiatrist he saw stated in a report that he “strongly” supported the dissolution of the marriage “on medical grounds” as the husband suffered from a depressive disorder arising from difficulties in the marriage.
But his wife, represented by lawyer Ms Lim Say Fang, disputed almost everything he stated.
She said they had quarrelled on Nov 17, 2009, over a phone message he sent to his former girlfriend.
The row was so heated that she moved back to live with her parents.
Between May and July last year, the couple met up only occasionally to watch a movie or have a meal together.
On one occasion, the husband presented three proposals to the wife on their housing options, but she felt that they should continue to stay at the Normanton apartment.
And although some effort was made to reconcile, there was no significant move to patch up.
Judge Nair noted that the husband “took pains to explain the hardship he faced as a result of this union” and his affidavit showed how he “had difficulties adjusting to his wife’s ways...from the inception of the marriage”.
She said: “The question is whether these ways have caused exceptional hardship to him. I was of the view that it did not.”
Instead, Judge Nair said what she saw in this case was “the very thing the legislation seeks to prevent – haste in entering marriages and a refusal to work on the union, but rather to look for the exit point fast”.
“The husband’s sense of frustration started from the inception of the marriage and some of his concerns border on trivial,” said Judge Nair.
She was also concerned with the psychiatrist’s recommendation that the marriage should be dissolved immediately as the doctor didn’t get to speak to the wife.
She said the husband would be entitled to file a writ for divorce in October – as their marriage would have reached the three-year mark – and “from a purely practical angle, there was no need to hasten the dissolution” of the marriage.
http://thecourtroom.stomp.com.sg/st...orce_because_he_has_to_drive_wife_to_gym.html
