fc_judgments_version: 25
This data as json
| _id | _item | _version | _commit | tags | date | court | case-number | title | citation | url | counsel | timestamp | coram | html | _item_full_hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | 18 | 2 | 1289 | [
"Russell Thio (Emerald Law LLC) for the plaintiff",
"Carolyn Natalie Bava and Joshua Daniel Foo Zu Ian (Lee & Lee) for the defendant."
] |
2024-03-12T16:00:00Z[GMT] | <root><head><title>WTW v WTX</title></head><content><div class="contentsOfFile"> <h2 align="center" class="title"><span class="caseTitle"> WTW <em>v</em> WTX </span><br><span class="Citation offhyperlink"><a class="pagecontent" href="javascript:viewPageContent('/Judgment/31070-SSP.xml')">[2024] SGFC 9</a></span></h2><table id="info-table"><tbody><tr class="info-row"><td class="txt-label" style="padding: 4px 0px; white-space: nowrap" valign="top">Case Number</td><td class="info-delim1" style="padding: 4px">:</td><td class="txt-body">Originating Summons (Guardianship of Infants Act) No 7 of 2023</td></tr><tr class="info-row"><td class="txt-label" style="padding: 4px 0px; white-space: nowrap" valign="top">Decision Date</td><td class="info-delim1" style="padding: 4px">:</td><td class="txt-body">16 February 2024</td></tr><tr class="info-row"><td class="txt-label" style="padding: 4px 0px; white-space: nowrap" valign="top">Tribunal/Court</td><td class="info-delim1" style="padding: 4px">:</td><td class="txt-body">Family Court</td></tr><tr class="info-row"><td class="txt-label" style="padding: 4px 0px; white-space: nowrap" valign="top">Coram</td><td class="info-delim1" style="padding: 4px">:</td><td class="txt-body"> Patrick Tay Wei Sheng </td></tr><tr class="info-row"><td class="txt-label" style="padding: 4px 0px; white-space: nowrap" valign="top">Counsel Name(s)</td><td class="info-delim1" style="padding: 4px">:</td><td class="txt-body"> Russell Thio (Emerald Law LLC) for the plaintiff; Carolyn Natalie Bava and Joshua Daniel Foo Zu Ian (Lee & Lee) for the defendant. </td></tr><tr class="info-row"><td class="txt-label" style="padding: 4px 0px; white-space: nowrap" valign="top">Parties</td><td class="info-delim1" style="padding: 4px">:</td><td class="txt-body"> WTW — WTX </td></tr></tbody></table> <p class="txt-body"><span style="font-style:italic">Family Law</span> – <span style="font-style:italic">Guardianship</span></p> <p></p><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td width="80%"><p class="Judg-Hearing-Date">16 February 2024</p></td><td><p class="Judg-Date-Reserved"></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p> <p class="Judg-Author"> District Judge Patrick Tay Wei Sheng:</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_1"></a>1 The mother of two young daughters passed away in 2018, shortly after the younger daughter was born. Rallying around their father to support them, the maternal grandmother took in and raised the younger daughter for two years while a paternal aunt provided daycare for the elder daughter until the elder daughter entered childcare. But the relationship between the father and the aunt soured after the father met a new partner who had since become his wife. Things came to a head on 22 May 2022, when the aunt frustrated the attempts of the father to retrieve his daughters after they had spent the day at her residence. Thereafter, the father stopped the interactions between his daughters and the aunt.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_2"></a>2 The aunt subsequently filed multiple reports with public authorities including the police, the Ministry of Social and Family Development, and even the Prime Minister’s Office. Therein, she alleged that the father had ill-treated his daughters. In consequence, the Child Protective Service of the Ministry of Social and Family Development (the “CPS”) investigated the father and interviewed his daughters. At the conclusion of those investigations and interviews, the CPS found that the daughters were “functioning well” and that there was no basis to intervene in their care by the father.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_3"></a>3 Unhappy with these determinations of the CPS, the aunt commenced these proceedings. She applied to be made the joint guardian of the daughters, who are now seven and five years of age respectively. She also prayed for “access” to the daughters, and subsequently asked for the “care and control” of the daughters. She further sought the appointment of a child representative to assess the psychological state of the daughters while they had been in the care of the father. She claimed that she had been the “long-standing caregiver”<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_1" id="Ftn_1_1"><sup>[note: 1]</sup></a></span> of the daughters and that the father had ill-treated or been deficient in his care for them. She attributed this deficiency of the father to the “involvement” of his new wife in the lives of the family.<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_2" id="Ftn_2_1"><sup>[note: 2]</sup></a></span></p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_4"></a>4 I found that the father had not ill-treated or been deficient in his care for his daughters. Instead, his daughters were functioning well in his care. Intervening in his parental authority and responsibility by making the aunt a joint guardian of his daughters would thus be unnecessary. Indeed, given the acrimony that had developed between the aunt and him, their joint exercise of such guardianship would have introduced needless volatility in the lives of the daughters. I thus dismissed the application.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_5"></a>5 The aunt has filed an appeal against this decision. I now provide my reasons for it.</p> <p class="Judg-Heading-1">Joint guardianship</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_6"></a>6 The power of the Family Court to appoint a guardian of a child to act jointly with his or her surviving father is found in s 6(2) of the Guardianship of Infants Act 1934 (the “GIA”):</p> <p class="Judg-Quote-1"> <b>Rights of surviving parent as to guardianship</b> </p> <p class="Judg-Quote-1"> <b>6.</b>—(1) …</p> <p class="Judg-Quote-1">(2) On the death of the mother of an infant, the father, if surviving, shall, subject to the provisions of this Act, be guardian of the infant, either alone or jointly with any guardian appointed by the mother. When no guardian has been appointed by the mother or if the guardian or guardians appointed by the mother is or are dead or refuses or refuse to act, the court may if it thinks fit appoint a guardian to act jointly with the father.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_7"></a>7 Hence, <em>prima facie</em>, a surviving father has the right to the custody of his children (<em>Re C (an infant)</em> <a class="pagecontent" href="javascript:viewPageContent('/SLR/[2003] 1 SLR(R) 0502.xml')">[2003] 1 SLR(R) 502</a> (“<em>Re C</em>”) at [15]). Although the Family Court retains an overriding discretion to appoint an additional guardian to act jointly with the surviving father, this discretion will be exercised only if necessitated by the welfare of the child. Every exercise of this discretion entails an intrusion into the parental authority and responsibility of the surviving father. And the State will intervene in the parenting of children only as a last resort. The GIA should therefore not be interpreted as conferring upon the Family Court a general and broad discretion to appoint guardians (<em>VET v VEU</em> <a class="pagecontent" href="javascript:viewPageContent('/SLR/25033-SSP.xml')">[2020] 4 SLR 1120</a> at [32]).</p> <p class="Judg-Heading-1">Decision</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_8"></a>8 On the evidence, the father had cared for his daughters ably. He had raised and housed them since their births, save for the two years after the passing of the mother during which the younger daughter had lived with the maternal grandmother. First with their mother and now with his new wife, he had provided his daughters a stable and secure family environment that conduced to their healthy development. As the CPS observed in a reply to the aunt on 10 July 2023, following repeated emails from her on the parenting of the father, the daughters were regular in their school attendance, participating in school activities, socialising well, and were in general functioning well.<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_3" id="Ftn_3_1"><sup>[note: 3]</sup></a></span></p> <p class="Judg-Quote-1">Dear [Aunt]</p> <p class="Judg-Quote-1">We refer to your lawyer’s email to Child Protective Service (CPS) on 28 June 2023 and appeal to Prime Minister’s Office on 5 and 10 July 2023.</p> <p class="Judg-Quote-1">CPS interviewed your nieces [names redacted] on 29 May 2023 and assessed that they did not display any signs or symptoms of trauma or emotional distress. Their schools have also confirmed that the children have regular school attendance, they are able to participate in school activities and socialise well with their friends. They did not observe any behaviours indicative of emotional distress or child protection concerns.</p> <p class="Judg-Quote-1">CPS, the Family Justice Courts and FAM@FSC had spoken to you and explained to you that a psychological assessment on your nieces is no required at this juncture as they are observed to be functioning well.</p> <p class="Judg-Quote-1">CPS will not continue with its investigation any further. CPS encourages you to continue to cooperate with the counsellor from FAM@FSC (Fei Yue – Choa Chu Kang) who will work with you and your brother to support the well-being of your nieces. Unless there is new development of concern, CPS will not respond to further queries or appeals on this matter.</p> <p class="Judg-Quote-1">Thank you.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_9"></a>9 The aunt nevertheless claimed that the father was unable and unfit to parent the daughters. She raised a litany of allegations, but most of them were of limited relevanve. She alleged the father had “alienated himself from the paternal side of the family”,<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_4" id="Ftn_4_1"><sup>[note: 4]</sup></a></span> “allowed his own father to seek financial assistance from comcare”,<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_5" id="Ftn_5_1"><sup>[note: 5]</sup></a></span> “does not give his own mother regular allowance”,<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_6" id="Ftn_6_1"><sup>[note: 6]</sup></a></span> “showed no appreciation and gratitude towards the [aunt] and the maternal grandmother in particular by cutting them off despite knowing that they loved and cared for the girls”,<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_7" id="Ftn_7_1"><sup>[note: 7]</sup></a></span> and “confused [the elder daughter] by enrolling [her] in CHIJ despite proclaiming himself to be a staunch Buddhist and raising the girls in a Buddhist household.”<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_8" id="Ftn_8_1"><sup>[note: 8]</sup></a></span> She even extended this acrimony to the new wife of the father, speculating that the new wife had “forced the [father] to remove [his late wife’s] portraits in the matrimonial home”<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_9" id="Ftn_9_1"><sup>[note: 9]</sup></a></span> and had envied her bringing of porridge for the daughters “because [the new wife] did not know how to cook for the girls”.<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_10" id="Ftn_10_1"><sup>[note: 10]</sup></a></span> Ultimately, these allegations reflected her disdain for the father and his new wife rather than a concern for the welfare of his daughters.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_10"></a>10 A minority of the allegations appeared more relevant. But they still fell short of showing that the welfare of the daughters necessitated appointing the aunt as their joint guardian.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_11"></a>11 The aunt alleged that the father had on 22 May 2022 traumatised the daughters by assaulting her in front of them. But the sequence of events that evening is disputed. Further, any force had been used in the context of the aunt frustrating the efforts of the father to retrieve his daughters after they had spent the day at her residence. The aunt had no legal basis to so interfere in this parental authority of the father to so return his daughters to his care. Even if his reaction to that interference had been misguided, that reaction reflected little more than an innocuous desire to retrieve his daughters.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_12"></a>12 The aunt alleged too that the father had made his daughters “sleep on double decker beds, which [the younger daughter] eventually fell off and hit her head”<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_11" id="Ftn_11_1"><sup>[note: 11]</sup></a></span> and “refused to question why [the elder daughter] suffered 8 stitches on her chin after [the childcare centre] allowed such an injury to happen under their care”.<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_12" id="Ftn_12_1"><sup>[note: 12]</sup></a></span> But these injuries were, even on the evidence of the aunt, the product of accidents. There was nothing inherently objectionable with the father having his daughters sleep on double decker beds or or of accepting that the injuries sustained by the daughter at childcare had been caused accidentally. His adoption of such a rugged parenting approach was well within the remit of his parental authority and responsibility.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_13"></a>13 The aunt alleged further that the father had prioritised his new wife’s pet dogs to his daughters,<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_13" id="Ftn_13_1"><sup>[note: 13]</sup></a></span> had left his daughters unkempt,<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_14" id="Ftn_14_1"><sup>[note: 14]</sup></a></span> had neglected to provide milk feeds to his daughters,<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_15" id="Ftn_15_1"><sup>[note: 15]</sup></a></span> and had inflicted harsh punishment on his daughters that included pinching and punching them as well as locking them in the bathroom or outside the house.<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_16" id="Ftn_16_1"><sup>[note: 16]</sup></a></span> But there was little evidence beyond the bare and self-serving assertions of the aunt that the father had left his daughters unkempt or had failed to attend to their needs. For the allegation of neglecting to feed the daughters, the father clarified that he had simply been following the advice of the daughters’ dentist. He explained that the dentist had advised that the teeth of the elder daughter were decaying, and that feeding her milk and other sugary foods would exacerbate that decay because sugar would pool around her teeth.<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_17" id="Ftn_17_1"><sup>[note: 17]</sup></a></span> He added that the dentist had also observed that the elder daughter, who had by then been five years of age, should not be feeding from a bottle.<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_18" id="Ftn_18_1"><sup>[note: 18]</sup></a></span> These explanations were eminently reasonable and I accepted them. And for the allegation of harsh physical punishment, the evidence did not show that he had punched or pinched the daughters. Although he had confined the elder daughter in a room and punished his daughters physically, he had done so judiciously and only after explaining to them the rationale for the correction. The allegations of the aunt about the parenting of the father could not therefore be sustained.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_14"></a>14 Notably, even before commencing these proceedings, the aunt had raised substantially the same allegations about the parenting of the father to the police, the CPS, and even the Prime Minister’s Office. Having investigated the father and interviewed the children, the CPS found no evidence of that the father had abused the daughters and declined to intervene in his parenting.<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_19" id="Ftn_19_1"><sup>[note: 19]</sup></a></span> Before me, the aunt did not dispute that the CPS had made such determinations. Yet she claimed that the father had conditioned the daughters to conceal their “psychological and mental trauma” during those investigations. But this was pure conjecture by the aunt. I did not think, even on a <em>prima facie</em> basis, that there was any issue with the parenting of the father.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_15"></a>15 For completeness, the aunt had requested the appointment of a child representative to assess the psychological state of the daughters while they had been in the care of the father. A child representative is a professional who is empowered to investigate and report on matters concerning the welfare of a child. But multiple public authorities had performed independent and objective investigations into the welfare of the daughters. These investigations had been conducted by forensic and allied professionals. And all these investigations had revealed no concerns about the welfare of the daughters and no basis to intervene in the parenting of the father. There was thus little utility in commissioning further investigations by a child representative. More crucially, the daughters had, over the past year alone, been subjected to multiple interviews about their welfare. It would hardly be in their welfare to subject them to further interviews with a child representative on the same subject.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_16"></a>16 In any event, even if the appointment of a joint guardian for the daughters was justified, it was unclear that the aunt should be appointed as that joint guardian. Her relationship with their father was fraught with acrimony. Inserting her into the sphere of the parental authority and responsibility of the father by compelling him to make decisions on the daughters jointly with her would introduce needless volatility in the lives of the daughters.</p> <p class="Judg-Heading-1">Conclusion</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_17"></a>17 I thus dismissed the application by the aunt to be appointed as an additional guardian to act jointly with the surviving father in matters concerning his daughters. Given this decision, there was no need for me to decide on the application by the aunt for the care and control of, or the access to, the daughters. Still, noteworthy was the evolution in the positions of the aunt on these matters. In her originating summons, she sought only “access” to the daughters. She confirmed the same in her supporting affidavit, in which she declared that “I have no intention of seeking custody, care and control of the Girls”.<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_20" id="Ftn_20_1"><sup>[note: 20]</sup></a></span> Yet she soon resiled from this declaration, stated that she “seeks … care and control of both [daughters]”, and offered scant explanation beyond a bare assertion that the father “does not seem to have any intention in changing the way he treats his daughters”<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_21" id="Ftn_21_1"><sup>[note: 21]</sup></a></span> for this evolution in her positions.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_18"></a>18 The father sought costs of $5,000, inclusive of disbursements, for the hearing of this application. This sum was commensurate with the efforts through which he had been put for the hearing in responding to the multitude of allegations made against him. I awarded him the sum that he had sought.</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_19"></a>19 In <em>CSW v CSX</em> <a class="pagecontent" href="javascript:viewPageContent('/Judgment/29906-SSP.xml')">[2023] SGHC(A) 23</a>, a mother made repeated complaints about the parenting abilities of the father to the CPS and other public authorities in a bid to obtain for herself the care and control of the children. When those complaints produced no action by the public authorities against the father, the mother commenced judicial proceedings for similar relief in which she made similar allegations against the father. In rejecting the allegations of the mother, the Appellate Division of the High Court rebuked her for “involve[ing] the machinery of the state in essentially what was a parental disagreement” and lamented that her actions had produced anti-therapeutic consequences for the children (at [84]).</p> <p class="Judg-1"><a id="p1_20"></a>20 Regrettably, this was precisely what had been done here by the aunt, who as a non-parent of the daughters had even less basis to disagree with the parenting decisions of their surviving father. She complained about the father to the police and the CPS, and when those complaints did not produce her desired result, sent an “appeal” to the Prime Minister’s Office. These complaints subjected the daughters to interviews and their father to investigations that eventually disclosed no basis to intervene in the parenting of the father. Rather than accept that the reality that the father was an able parent of his daughters, she commenced these proceedings, repeated her allegations against the father, and even speculated that the father and his daughters had misled the CPS in its investigations. So baseless were some of her allegations that they were struck out even before the substantive hearing of this application (with costs of $1,200 ordered against her).<span class="FootnoteRef"><a href="#Ftn_22" id="Ftn_22_1"><sup>[note: 22]</sup></a></span> The remainder of the allegations have now been heard on the merits and dismissed. It would be in the interests of herself and of the daughters, whom she professes to love, for her to begin respecting the parenting authority and responsibility of their father.</p> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%"><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_1_1" id="Ftn_1">[note: 1]</a></sup>P’s Subs at [4]</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_2_1" id="Ftn_2">[note: 2]</a></sup>P’s Subs at [6]–[7]</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_3_1" id="Ftn_3">[note: 3]</a></sup>Aunt’s 5<sup>th</sup> Affidavit (dated 9 October 2023) at p 112</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_4_1" id="Ftn_4">[note: 4]</a></sup>Aunt’s Submissions at p 14</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_5_1" id="Ftn_5">[note: 5]</a></sup>Aunt’s Submissions at p 14</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_6_1" id="Ftn_6">[note: 6]</a></sup>Aunt’s Submissions at p 14</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_7_1" id="Ftn_7">[note: 7]</a></sup>Aunt’s Submissions at p 15</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_8_1" id="Ftn_8">[note: 8]</a></sup>Aunt’s Submissions at p 16</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_9_1" id="Ftn_9">[note: 9]</a></sup>Aunt’s Submissions at p 17</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_10_1" id="Ftn_10">[note: 10]</a></sup>Aunt’s Submissions at p 19</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_11_1" id="Ftn_11">[note: 11]</a></sup>Aunt’s Submissions at p 17</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_12_1" id="Ftn_12">[note: 12]</a></sup>Aunt’s Submissions at p 20</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_13_1" id="Ftn_13">[note: 13]</a></sup>Aunt’s Submissions at p 16</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_14_1" id="Ftn_14">[note: 14]</a></sup>Aunt’s Submissions at p 20</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_15_1" id="Ftn_15">[note: 15]</a></sup>Aunt’s Submissions at p 20</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_16_1" id="Ftn_16">[note: 16]</a></sup>Aunt’s Submissions at p 21</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_17_1" id="Ftn_17">[note: 17]</a></sup>Father’s 2<sup>nd</sup> Affidavit at [52]–[53]</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_18_1" id="Ftn_18">[note: 18]</a></sup>Father’s 2<sup>nd</sup> Affidavit at [63]</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_19_1" id="Ftn_19">[note: 19]</a></sup>Father’s 2<sup>nd</sup> Affidavit at [7]–[9]</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_20_1" id="Ftn_20">[note: 20]</a></sup>Aunt’s 1<sup>st</sup> Affidavit at [5]</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_21_1" id="Ftn_21">[note: 21]</a></sup>Aunt’s 2<sup>nd</sup> Affidavit at [5]</p><p class="Footnote"><sup><a href="#Ftn_22_1" id="Ftn_22">[note: 22]</a></sup>FC/ORC xxx/2023</p></div></content></root> | f70c49a3a8f0fe61462a6ac1e042fe9d0d28a525 |
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