[WEBINAR] Family Conference 2020

Session 1:Singapore Family Law’s Unique Power to Divide Matrimonial Assets (Inaugural CJ Koh Family Law Lecture)

Facilitator

Kee Lay Lian – Partner, Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP

Speaker

Leong Wai Kum – Professor, SUSS School of Law, Emeritus Professor NUS Law

Singapore is rightly proud, as part of the common law legal system of nations, to have operated its law of division of matrimonial assets (a concept innovated by the Scandinavian countries as “deferred community of property”) for four decades. Section 112 of the Women’s Charter, empowering the Family Justice Courts to “order the division between the parties of any matrimonial asset … in such proportions as the court thinks just and equitable” is truly a unique empowerment that attests to the genius of Parliament in Singapore in 1979. Four decades of development later, important decisions continue to be delivered by our highest courts. BPC v BPB and another appeal [2019] SGCA 03 accepted that the purpose of deciding whether properties fulfil the definition of matrimonial assets is to identify all the material gains of the marital partnership and USB v USA and another appeal [2020] SGCA 57 elaborated on this. UYQ v UYP [2020] SGCA 3 has offered the life-buoy that the ANJ v ANK structured approach is not writ in stone. The approach was never intended to be a rigid, mechanistic and overly-arithmetical fossilised calculation. Instead the proportions that court thinks just and equitable should accord with the aspirations of the family justice system to enable the harmonious resolution of family disputes. What is the duty of the legal representative to guide her clients towards a resolution that conforms to the ‘therapeutic justice’ vision of the Family Justice Courts?