SINGAPORE – When the Family Justice Court awards spousal alimony, such payments are meant to be given for life, unless the recipient remarries or there is an approval to revoke it before either party dies.
The mere fact that the paying spouse has retired or stopped working will not end the obligation because such factors would have been considered by the court before it makes such a decision.
Of course, there is nothing to stop retired spouses from going to court to ask for a revision or even a revocation of such awards if they can prove they cannot continue making such payments due to financial hardship.
Many divorces that involve alimony will inevitably prolong the disputes of estranged couples due to defaults or inability to keep up with the payments.
As a result, the courts have in recent years either ordered lump sum awards for a “clean break” or no maintenance if the spouses are given decent shares of their matrimonial assets.
The issue of maintenance payment was recently highlighted in a High Court dispute after a retiree, whose divorce was finalised in 2013, applied to end the monthly payments of about $5,000 to his ex-wife after he stopped working.
The court noted that retirement alone would not end his obligation to pay, especially when he was found to have substantial assets and savings.
After considering the wife’s needs, the court cut the payout to $3,800 but also allowed the man to pay a lump sum of $364,800, or eight years’ worth of the alimony, to end his obligation. The retiree has since filed an appeal against this ruling.
Here are two other cases involving husbands who applied to the court to change their obligation to support their ex-wives.
In this case, the court ended the husband’s maintenance obligation because there was “a material change in circumstances”.
This is because the husband could show that his savings had been depleting after he could not find work due to ill health and his age.
As he has also remarried and needs to take care of his new family, he asked the court to allow him to stop supporting his ex-wife after paying her for over a decade.
The payment amount was not disclosed, but it had started after the couple’s amicable divorce in 2001.
Five years later, the man, then 56, had to resign from his job due to poor health. Despite this, he continued to support his ex-wife for another 13 years until he became worried that he would not have any money left to provide for his new family.
In allowing his application, the court accepted the husband’s evidence of the total value of his assets and rejected the ex-wife’s claim that he “had hidden away immense wealth”.
This shows that spouses can ask for a change in their obligation to pay maintenance if they can prove that their financial circumstances at the time of the award had “materially changed when compared with (their) present financial and personal situation”.
In this case, a 65-year-old retiree has a young child from his second marriage and was paying $1,200 a month in alimony to his former wife, 69.
He asked for the sum to be halved because his own household expenses, which include mortgage repayment, came to about $7,000 a month.
He had $500,000 in his CPF and other savings, but he was worried it may not be enough in the long term, and noted that his new wife, 38, would need to find work to supplement their expenses.
It is not known what assets his former wife had received in their divorce settlement, but she objected to his request to cut her alimony to $600 as she could no longer work due to a spinal condition.
A reason they ended up with limited savings was spending some $600,000 on both their adult children’s overseas education. It was not disclosed why the children were no longer in contact with their parents.
While the retiree had more savings than his former wife, the High Court reduced the monthly maintenance to $600, noting that the man’s money would be essential for his new family.
The lesson from these cases is simply this – it is paramount for everyone to make adequate financial plans so that when things go wrong, they don’t need to depend on others for their own expenses.
-
Check out The Straits Times InvestMe microsite to sign up for the first MasterClass – Retire With More Money – by Invest Editor Tan Ooi Boon.
