BCLM008: You are working as a Paralegal in the law firm Justice Law LLP Your Boss Ronaldo Wong is the Senior Partner: Family Law Case Study, TP, Singapore

The Assignment

1. You are working as a Paralegal in the law firm Justice Law LLP. Your boss Ronaldo Wong is the Senior Partner of the law firm. Your the boss just received an email from an old school mate Harold Wee seeking advice with regards to his marriage to Daisy, whom your boss knows as well as she was also in the same class.

2. Your boss left the email with instructions for you to prepare for him to advise Harold’s legal position from the questions he asked you’re the boss at a meeting to be held over Zoom that has been scheduled next week.

3. You are required to examine the case, sort out the facts, do research on the law, and then answer the questions posed to your boss by his friend Harold Wee.

Please support your answers with the relevant statutory provision
or case authority wherever possible.

From: Harold Wee BK@gmail.com.sg
To: RonaldoWong@Justicickelawllp.org.sg
Date:

Hi Ronaldo
It was good to see you last night at Zouk after so long. So much to
catch up on. As I mentioned last night, a few years after we left school, I
married our class “Sarong Party Queen Daisy” in 2010 when our daughter
Helena turned 6 years old and needed to register for Primary One in one
of the top schools. (The truth is I really got tired of Daisy’s mother nagging
me all the time to marry her!).

Helena is now a handful! She is only 16 years and wants to move out to stay in her church retreat center because she says she has just become a Christian and cannot stand my mother running a temple in our house. My mother is very upset as my family is the 3rd generation of hosting the deity of the temple in the house that she gave this house to me as our wedding gift at 2, Binjay Rise. I am very angry and I will not allow her to be a Christian. I will not support her if she moves out! How can I allow her to leave our family religion especially
where my mother and I are Trustees of the Temple in our home! I know
she wants very badly to study at the expensive Swiss Culinary Institute in
Singapore.

I will stop paying for her education and allowance of S$650/
pm if she insists on leaving our family religion to become a Christian. That
is a Western religion! Can you advise me on this as this religious thing
it is a big issue for my mother and me as we are both Trustees of the
Temple as well? Can I carry out my threat and stop giving her allowance
and also stop paying for her education now at the private school if she will
not listen to me? I also don’t want to pay for her education at the Swiss
Culinary Institute starting in May this year if she leaves the family religion.

We can discuss over Zoom next week as you have suggested in
your SMS. I want you to advise me of so many things. Briefly, I want to
know what I can do or cannot do according to this silly law called the
Women’s Charter that I hear from the guys that only protect women and
is the weapon for women to punish men!

Off my head, these are my questions: Please Give Reasons To All Your Answers So That I Can Better Understand The Situation. Thanks
1. Helena:
a) I am her father. Can Daisy or I stop her from leaving our family religion as we have brought her up following this our family religion?

b) If she doesn’t stop this new religion nonsense, can I stop paying her monthly allowance, stop paying for her education now and also not pay for her education in May when the term starts at the expensive Swiss Culinary Institute?
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2. Daisy:
I want to end my marriage. I always felt I was “forced” to marry her because she was pregnant with Helena and her mother’s incessant nagging. There was and is no love involved. She is no comparison to Laurena, my French Princess who is now pregnant with my child!
a) Will I be able to divorce Daisy? If not, why not? If yes, on what basis should I be able to do so?

My drinking buddies advise me this is the best time to divorce her because my business is so bad because of Covid19. I also have no rental income as my tenants have terminated their tenancies since COVID19 hit Singapore. I have transferred all my personal bank accounts to joint accounts held by my mother and me in the name
of the family business except for one joint account with Daisy that only has about S$200, 000 in joint names with Daisy that we use for household expenses. I think Daisy has her own money in her personal account from her previous work but I don’t know the amount.
b) If I were to proceed to divorce Daisy, what about the following? Will she be able to get her hands on any of them?
i) my properties – at 3, Binjai Park; 5, Watten Estate and our matrimonial home at 2, Binjai Rise?

ii) my money in the company accounts held in a joint account with my mother, in the one joint account with Daisy & the one in her personal account?

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c) I want to have custody of all the 3 children in case she goes and become a nun as she once said to me and also I can manage the maintenance for the 3 children better because of cash flow problems as she sends them for all kinds of unnecessary enrichment classes that I can immediately stop once I have custody. Can I succeed to have custody of all 3 children? Why?

d) If I have custody of all 3 children, can I also save on paying Daisy any maintenance? She can try to get a job to support herself after all; she is not handicapped and she is after all a graduate?

e) If I don’t get custody of all 3 children, how can I protect my adopted son Henry to make sure he is provided for his university education as I am afraid Daisy may not give him anything if I pass away suddenly after our divorce?

3. Edmund
a) He is a top CEO of a Government-Linked Company (GLC) and from the media is doing very well because he just exited from one of his personal Fintech start-ups. He is cash-rich because of the start-up he sold off. I have cash flow problems now, and I would like you to help my mother to ask him to maintain her now. This is justifiable since my father paid for his studies till post-graduate in London. Can you help me get some money from him to “maintain my mother”? This will of course ease my own cashflow problems?

b) Can you advise me on his wanting to go to Court to get 5, Watten Did road transfer to him? My father did not make a will and anyway, all the properties my father put in my mother’s name as my father was afraid to lose his properties in case our family 10 business failed. My mother has since, because of age, transferred all the properties to me.

4. Laurena:
a) How can I satisfy myself and my mother that the unborn child she is carrying is really mine?

b) She wants me to promise I can legally marry her as soon as possible and not later than 1st October 2021 that is one month before the estimated date of delivery on 1st September 2021. Can/should I make her this promise?

5. Rose:
a) Can I refuse to pay her the maintenance that she is asking for herself?

b) Can I refuse to pay maintenance for the child as she knows the group paid for a group fun night only for that one night? I went further and I told her very clearly to make sure the one night doesn’t give me problems after and she assured me it will not happen. She knows I never want to have any child from that one night of paid fun.