High-income ex-wife wins larger share of marital assets after appeal

Judges deem marriage a dual-income one where man was not primary homemaker

- Theresa Tan

A woman earning over $30,000 a month won her appeal, following a divorce, that her marriage should be considered dual-income in the eyes of the law, even though she was the sole breadwinner for most of her married life of nearly 35 years.

The successful appeal gave the woman, who is a director in a company, a larger share of the couple's matrimonial assets, which are worth $7.8 million.

The Appellate Division of the High Court gave her 67 per cent of the marital assets, up from the 60 per cent another High Court judge awarded her previously.

The judgment by Justice Woo Bih Li, Justice Debbie Ong and Justice Mavis Chionh was published on Feb 5.

They pointed out that simply because one spouse earns far less than the other does not make the marriage a single-income one.

Also, just because one spouse worked intermittently over the course of the marriage does not in itself determine if it was a single- or double-income union, they said.

Instead, the key focus should be a "qualitative assessment" of the roles played by each spouse during the marriage when it comes to determining if the marriage was a single- or double-income one.

The couple in this case are in their 60s with three children, who are in their 20s and 30s.

The woman worked full-time throughout their marriage, but the man worked full-time in a bank only in the first nine years of their union.

He later tried his hand at a series of jobs, such as selling fried noodles at a hawker stall, running a home delivery laundry service, and acting as a general manager of a private firm which paid him $2,200 a month.