Man asks HDB to repossess flat so that ex-wife will get less money

A man was so adamant about depriving his former wife of more money during their divorce that he applied to the Housing Board to repossess his resale flat instead of him selling it on the open market.

By making such an unusual request, he effectively ensured his wife would get less money from her 20 per cent stake in the property because they would not have the chance to market it to eligible buyers who may be willing to pay more for it.

But his unreasonable action later ended up penalising himself because the High Court found he had “caused prejudice to the wife by inducing HDB to acquire the matrimonial flat”.

The man, who works in a uniformed group, had stopped paying the mortgage and applied to the HDB to take back his flat because of “financial difficulties”.

He did so despite the willingness of his ex-wife, who works as an administrative assistant in a hospital, to pay the mortgage loan. But she could not do so on her own because she was not named as an owner of the flat.

High Court Judge Choo Han Teck said: “The husband’s refusal to either add her name to the title or let her repay the loan, led directly to the eventual forfeiture of the matrimonial home, thereby depriving the wife of the higher proceeds that an open market sale would have yielded.”

Initially, the husband was found to be entitled to 80 per cent of the flat but because of his action in rendering his ex-wife homeless and preventing her from seeing their only daughter, a “negative value” was imposed on him and this reduced his share of the flat to 75 per cent.

This means he had to pay his ex-wife 25 per cent of the payment from HDB for giving up the flat.

This case provides a compelling lesson in not being penny wise and pound foolish in a marriage because not listing a spouse as an owner of the matrimonial home does not mean the spouse will have no share in the property.

When a marriage ends, the courts will divide a couple’s assets in a just and equitable manner based on both parties’ financial contributions as well as indirect contributions, such as taking care of the children and running the household.

In this case, even if the man had included his wife as an owner and then allowed her to pay and remain in the flat until he asked for an order to sell it in the open market, he would still have retained the lion’s share of the higher proceeds because of his higher financial contributions to the flat.

Wife got evicted twice

The couple in this case, who were married for about 12 years and have a young daughter, lived in the flat of the husband’s parents for the first five years of their marriage. But the wife could not get along with her mother-in-law and one day, she was locked out and “evicted” after a dispute.

At the time, the husband had just bought a resale flat and the wife moved into the unfurnished home, living there alone for six months. The husband later agreed to move in after she agreed to let his parents move in as well.

But this arrangement lasted for only a year because the parties could not get along and the husband and his parents moved out, taking the couple’s daughter with them. He then attempted to force her to leave by cancelling his accounts for electricity and water supply.

The couple started to wage war by filing various court applications for divorce, personal protection as well as for custody and control of their child. The wife even succeeded in citing the husband for contempt of court after he failed to abide by the custody orders.

About two years after they started living apart, the husband applied to have his flat repossessed on the grounds that he did not have money to pay the mortgage. He noted that this was partly due to the wife’s reluctance to rent out the spare rooms.

But the wife countered that she did not rent out a room because as the sole occupant, she felt unsafe living with strangers. She was willing to foot all the bills relating to the flat but was prevented from doing so because the husband did not give his consent to the HDB. Ultimately, she was evicted from the flat in July 2024 after the unit was taken back by the HDB.

As she was kicked out of her home twice during the marriage, she argued that the husband’s conduct had undermined the cooperative partnership of spouses, and harmed her interest.

Justice Choo agreed and thus increased her share of the flat by 5 per cent so she would receive 25 per cent of the proceeds from the repossession. As the wife will also get over $52,000 from her share of their remaining assets, the judge upheld the decision of the Family Justice Court in not awarding a monthly maintenance to her.

Conducts that harm spouses

In 2015, the Court of Appeal reduced the share of a woman’s matrimonial assets by 7 per cent in an unusual case after she was convicted and jailed for a year for poisoning her then husband by putting trace amounts of arsenic in his food for over a year.

Her actions had caused the husband to be admitted to hospital several times, but the arsenic poisoning was discovered only when he was admitted twice for the last incident.

During this couple’s divorce, the court noted that the wife had embarked on a premeditated course of action to inflict harm on the husband by poisoning him over a period of time and that the court could not turn a blind eye to the malicious act.

It said her action was “grossly disproportionate” to the emotional and verbal abuse she had suffered at the hands of the husband during the marriage.

But the court’s reduction of her share of the assets at the time from 35 per cent to 28 per cent did not mean the 7 per cent drop was meant to be a benchmark for such cases. The court had noted that the penalty “might well have been more” but in arriving at 7 per cent, it considered that the wife’s original share of the assets was at the low end of the range.

This decision was highlighted by Justice Choo when he imposed a 10 per cent reduction for the indirect contribution of the husband in this case over his role in giving up the flat as well as for preventing the wife from seeing her daughter.

The judge said the man could not claim that the wife did not care enough for their daughter when he was the one who stopped her from seeing the child, and he was punished for contempt of court as a result.

“He cannot rely on his own misconduct to claim a greater share of indirect contributions,” the judge added.

But the 10 per cent reduction of indirect contributions had the effect of only reducing his share of the matrimonial home by 5 per cent because the final ratio had to be calculated together with the ratio of their cash contributions.

What this means is that even when a marriage does not work out, it pays for couples to be fair and civil so they can part with their deserving shares of the assets and start anew.

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

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