SAMSTERS WANT TO GUESS????
Woman forced by parents to marry high-flyer ends up with bitter divorce in S’pore 28 years later
Kerr Puay Hian |
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In 1995, when she was 25, a promising young man asked for her hand.
The man, a young molecular biologist pursuing his PhD in New York, returned to his hometown and wanted a bride.
The woman declined for reasons only known to her.
Despite her grievances, the man managed to persuade her parents, and she was married off within 10 days when they "approved" the marriage for her.
Parents forced her to marry & put her on a plane to the U.S.
Her parents even paid for the wedding and the air ticket to send her to the U.S. to be with her husband.
The couple raised a daughter in the U.S. and eventually settled in Singapore.
However, their marriage of almost 30 years had no "happy ending".
The woman, now 53, shared her story during her divorce from her 55-year-old husband.
Claims she was abused
A High Court judgment made publicly available on Apr. 11 revealed that the couple was married in India in 1995.
After being forced to marry her husband and sent off to the U.S., the woman said she worked as a babysitter as she couldn't land a steady job without a university degree.
She claimed she was abused by her husband physically and mentally.
The woman had to hand over all her money to her husband.
She also alleged that her husband once hit her head against the wall so hard that the building management demanded he pay for the damage.
Moved to Singapore
While living in the U.S., they gave birth to their daughter, who is now in her 20s.
They eventually moved to Singapore, and the couple acquired Singapore citizenship while their daughter remained a U.S. citizen.
The judgment didn't reveal much details about what happened between the couple in Singapore and only stated that the woman once returned to India and came back only in 2014.
The couple co-owned both an HDB flat and a condominium unit.
Claims husband bullied her for being "inferior"
The woman said when she returned to Singapore, the HDB flat was rented out, so she wanted to move in with her daughter, who was living in the condominium.
She claimed that her presence "unsettled" her husband, so he "instigated" their daughter to take out a personal protection order (PPO) against her.
The woman claimed her husband "bullied" her for being "academically and professionally inferior".
She produced cards and letters written by her daughter expressing her love and affection for her and said they were still close even though she took out a PPO.
Contest for S$2m assets
After the couple filed for divorce, they contested how to split their matrimonial assets, mainly the HDB flat and condominium.
A district judge previously ruled that they split the sale of the HDB flat, and the woman can only get 13 per cent of the condominium. She was unhappy with the decision and appealed to the High Court.
In the judgment, the high court judge first addressed the woman's belated claim in her appeal — she was unhappy that she could only get S$176,500 from the HDB flat's sale when its value had increased to S$760,000.
He explained that while the woman appeared to protest against selling the flat, the husband had already successfully applied for a court order from the High Court to complete the sale on her behalf, and hence it was no longer an issue.
The high court judge said the woman's main contention was that the district judge attributed too little value to her indirect contributions to the marriage and should have accorded her a higher portion of the condominium sale.
The district judge determined that the woman should only be able to get S$161,400, which is 13 per cent of the condominium's value of around S$1.24 million, after considering outstanding loans.
His reasons were that the only documentary evidence the couple had was their CPF contributions, of which the husband contributed 95 per cent.
Thinks she contributed more to the marriage than her husband
The district judge also found the woman's indirect contribution was only 20 per cent.
The woman felt it was "too low given all the contributions and sacrifices" she claimed she made.
She pointed out in the appeal that the district judge didn't consider that she had given her husband control of her salary, credit card, bank accounts and CPF monies.
High court judge interviewed daughter and husband
However, the high court judge reasoned that the district judge's approach was sound.
The district judge had also rejected the husband's claims, for lack of evidence, that he made a S$100,000 contribution towards the condominium.
The high court judge interviewed the daughter and the husband to weigh the couple's non-financial contributions to the marriage.
He found the woman's claims were contradictory to the evidence she tendered.
Daughter tried to tell her to stop making the family miserable
For example, on the claims that the husband forced the daughter to take a PPO on her, while the cards and letters she tendered to the court did show the daughter still loved the woman, there was a more important message that the daughter wanted to tell her:
The high court judge highlighted that some letters were written many years ago, and the daughter, who was still young then, showed a mature and sensible mind.
The woman also claimed that the husband physically abused their daughter, but the daughter categorically denied it and only said that her parents had punished her when she was young a long time ago.
Appeal dismissed
The high court judge did not detail what the husband and daughter had said about the woman.
After his assessment, he felt that the husband contributed more to the marriage than the woman did and did not affect the district judge's decision.
On a final note, he addressed the woman's demands to order her husband to return the jewellery she claimed he took, but he declined to make the order as he could not provide details of what jewellery ought to be returned.
He pointed out that the district judge had ordered her to return the jewellery she held to the husband, which was meant for their daughter.
The high court judge dismissed the woman's appeal but made the couple each bear their own legal fees.
