Wife in 'slavery relationship' fails to convince court to grant divorce
She was in a tumultuous marriage and did not communicate with her husband for eight years, the woman told a family court.
The couple, who slept apart, even took out Personal Protection Orders against each other. On one occasion, the husband prevented the wife from using the washing machine, refrigerator and microwave oven, prompting the wife to call the police.
When things came to a head, the wife sought refuge at a woman’s shelter for about a month, before renting a room near the matrimonial flat for three months. She eventually returned to their flat.
But the wife’s application for divorce in August 2016 on the basis of the couple having lived apart for four years was turned down by a family court judge in January this year. The husband had contested the wife’s application.
In her grounds of decision released last Wednesday (19 September), made available on Thursday (27 September), District Judge Tan Shin Yi said she was not convinced the couple, now married for 20 years, had lived separate lives for four years continuously.
Said the judge, “The mere fact of sleeping in separate bedrooms alone is insufficient to conclusively prove that the parties had been living separately…while the parties often fought during the period of alleged separation from 2012 onwards, they had also periods where they made up and that there was no separation for the relevant period of four years.”
The couple, who were not named in the judge’s grounds, were married in Vietnam in 1998. They have a daughter, aged 16 at the time of the hearing in 2017. In court, the wife described her marriage as a “slavery relationship” where the husband treated her like he was a “grandfather” to her and liked to “punish” her and “train” her, while threatening to call the police on her.
The wife decided to end her marriage in 2009. She claimed that she slept separately from the husband and did not have sex with him from as early as 2008. She asserted that she stopped washing and ironing his clothes from as early as 2000.
From 2009, she stopped cooking and buying food for him, and the couple stopped having their meals together, she testified. They also stopped attending church, going on outings and celebrating festive occasions together.
The husband, however, testified that while the couple had their “rough times”, they often made up thereafter. He collected her mail and parcels for her, and often helped to heat up her food. And they still celebrated special occasions such as their wedding anniversary and public holidays together, he claimed.
On several occasions in 2016, they shared meals together and she also cooked for him, he asserted. Contrary to his wife’s claim, the man said they also had sex in 2016.
In her grounds, Judge Tan pointed to inconsistencies in the wife’s evidence. “At first, she claimed that she had not spoken to the husband ‘for many, many years’ since they separated, presumably in 2009; however she subsequently admitted that she did talk to him on matters regarding their daughter.
“She also claimed that for the past ‘8 years I don’t communicate with him’ but in the same sentence admitted that they would be ‘quarrelling very loud’…She also admitted that in 2009, she had helped the husband to massage his hips.”
While the wife said she stopped attending the same church as the husband as early as 2009, their pastor stated that he had seen them together in church up to October 2016. On the witness stand, the wife also admitted attending the church occasionally.
When the wife got high auto-roaming charges while in Vietnam in 2013, she called the husband and he helped to resolve the issue with her telco. And when the wife did not return home and was uncontactable for three days in April 2015, the husband lodged a police report, stating that he was “worried” about her.
Concluding that there was still “some community of life” between the couple until at least in 2015, the judge said “despite the wife’s claims that the parties were separated during this time…they were still interacting with each other on a regular basis over the usual household matters, matters relating to their daughter, as a married couple would.”
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