Family Justice Courts Case Highlights

Since the rationale behind the penal notice is to put a party on notice, there is no reason to require a party to apply to court for the endorsement of a penal notice.

It is sufficient that the act or omission was intentional, and at the time of doing so the offender had knowledge of the underlying court order. An obstinate adherence to an incorrect belief in the face of truth cannot exculpate an offender from the breach of a court order.

The court’s inquiry into the actual intentions of a transferor of property is a fact-specific process.

All four factors relevant in deciding whether to grant an extension of time to appeal are of equal importance, to be balanced against one another, having regard to all the facts and circumstances of the case concerned (Lee Hsien Loong v Singapore Democratic Party and others and another suit [2008] 1 SLR(R) 757.

Counsel are not the mere “mouthpieces” of their clients. They are not mere automatons, executing every instruction of the client.

The Joint Summary facilitates the fair disposal of the disputes between the parties and serves to avoid protracted litigation and unnecessary delays. The parties are put on ample notice by the words on the face of the Joint Summary that the position they take will be relied upon by the court in coming to its decision.

Where one of the parties to the marriage has received a gift or inheritance but evinces an intention to deal with that asset by, for example, giving it to the other party or incorporating it into the family estate, it is not inconsistent with s 112 for the court to give effect to such intention.

If one party having sole title decides unilaterally to sell or dispose of a non-cash matrimonial asset between the IJ and ancillary hearing, he will take the risk of any fluctuation in fair open market value between the sale and ancillary hearing date. The other party will have the higher of either the actual sale price or the open market valuation price ascertained as at or as close as possible to the ancillary order date.

The mere fact that the parties have been paying for certain items during the marriage does not automatically render such expenses reasonable expenses for the purposes of determining maintenance. In seeking to quantify the child’s reasonable expenses, parties should avoid an overly mathematical approach where receipts are adduced to prove every single item of expenditure.

In the first step of the structured approach, the crux of the exercise is in ascertaining the parties’ respective direct contributions towards acquiring the matrimonial assets. In this step, the court does not necessarily need to determine the parties’ property rights or specific beneficial ownership in the assets in order to calculate the direct contributions of the parties. What is instead important is the financial contributions that go towards an asset falling within the definition of “matrimonial asset”.