Man’s will barred widow from his assets as their marriage was a sham

A Singaporean was so adamant in not giving anything to his wife that he wrote in his will that none of his assets would go to her as their two-year marriage was a sham.

The unusual case came about because he claimed he had married the Chinese national out of sympathy so she could stay in Singapore as a “study mama” to care for her school-going daughter.

In his will, which was signed five days after his left foot was amputated because of diabetic complications, he stated he did not wish to give his three-room HDB flat and other personal properties to his wife.

He wrote that he merely married her to help her extend her stay to accompany her child who was then studying here. “We are unable to consummate our marriage,” he added.

Instead, he gave the flat to his half-sister, whom he cared for more than his other siblings. He told his close friend, who helped him to get the will done, that this sister deserved the flat because she had gone through a hard life and was financially poorer than him and his siblings.

He died barely two weeks after the will was done. Not surprisingly, his widow, who did not visit him in the hospital, contested the will, claiming this was done under suspicious circumstances without the presence of lawyers or doctors.

As the will was drafted in unequivocal terms that totally denied her of any inheritance, her only choice was to cast doubt on the entire will by claiming that her late husband did not have the mental capacity to sign it.

The High Court found that the man was not suffering from any kind of mental illness as he was in the hospital for treatment related to his diabetic condition. Since he was still in the hospital when he signed the will, his daily medical updates showed he was “alert, comfortable, oriented to time, place and person and with stable vital signs” on that day.

While the widow failed in her bid to declare the will void, she did not leave empty-handed. Before the case went to court, she had retained over $3,000 of the man’s savings as well as about $40,000 from his Central Provident Fund (CPF) account.

To safeguard funds in CPF from possible claims against a dead person’s estate, any balance there can be distributed to only beneficiaries who are nominated by its members.

As the man presumably did not make any CPF nomination, the balance of his account was distributed according to the intestacy law, which would give his legal spouse the right to his fund.

Here are three other important points on legacy planning that everyone should know.

Only the will matters

Even before the court ruled on this case in early 2025, readers of a Chinese-language newspaper here might already be familiar with this odd couple, thanks to detailed coverage of their relationship in 2014.

The woman and her daughter had leased a room from the man in 2011 and the couple registered their marriage in 2013.

But a year later, he invited two journalists and a photographer from the daily to his home where he disclosed that he had married his wife “out of sympathy” to allow her to remain in Singapore. He added that he did not even know her full name as he addressed her as “Miss”, and that they neither consummated their marriage nor even “held hands”.

He claimed that two days after the marriage, his wife chased out his other tenant and refused to pay rental and utility bills. As he could not tolerate her bullying ways, he suggested to her several times that he wanted to annul the marriage.

His wife, however, told a different story, claiming she got along very well with her husband and was truly in love with him for giving her a sense of home.

But her lovey-dovey nature changed abruptly when she got worked up and raised her unhappiness to the reporters about needing to pay rent when she was the mistress of the household. She even boasted that without her, “he will not be able to live longer”.

During the trial, in an attempt to discredit the two women reporters, she claimed they had blackmailed her to give up her inheritance of the flat in return for them dropping the story.

She did not explain how the reporters would have known about any inheritance matters because her husband’s will was written a year after the interview.

All the brouhaha relating to the news report came to nothing because High Court Judge Choo Han Teck said the newspaper report was inadmissible hearsay evidence as the reporters had not been called to testify.

What this means is that when it comes to deciding the lawful beneficiary, only facts relating to signing of the will matter.

Signing of the will

It is prudent to engage a lawyer to do your will because he or she can act as an independent expert witness if there is a dispute later.

In this case, the will was drafted by a lawyer who was not present during the signing at the hospital. Instead, the event was organised by the man’s friend who invited three relatives and a friend to be present at the signing.

A nephew and the friend acted as the witnesses of the will while the rest helped to read and interpret the will to the man.

Not surprisingly, the haphazard way of signing the will gave ammunition to the widow to cry foul because the will was not executed in “ordinary” circumstances.

Justice Choo said: “Much trouble and uncertainty could have been avoided if (they) had procured a doctor to serve as an independent witness to a testator who was recovering from major surgery. Moreover, drawing up one’s will without professional help, especially at one’s deathbed, is not wise.”

Validity of the will

If there is a dispute, the opinion of a medical professional is crucial to determine whether the testator, or owner of the will, has the mental capacity to sign it.

In this case, the relatives did not call the doctor who treated the man to comment on his state of mind. Instead, they relied on the medical records on the day of the will signing on Aug 17, 2015, which showed that he was mentally alert.

Justice Choo said such evidence would suggest that the man had the state of mind to sign his will. This was further corroborated by the statements of his five friends and relatives who witnessed the signing.

They said the man was alert, able to recognise them and spoke normally with them. He also nodded his head each time when the will was explained to him line by line.

Justice Choo said: “I am not prepared to find... that the five of them were lying. They do not appear to have anything to gain from the will – the beneficiary… is not directly related to any of these five people.”

He then dismissed the widow’s case because she did not produce any convincing evidence to show that the will was improperly made.

The case provides a compelling reason for everyone to get their legacy planning done early when they are healthy because writing wills at the eleventh hour always has the tendency of courting trouble for their beneficiaries.

Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

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