Court of Appeal Sets Aside Financial Remedy Order

The Court of Appeal has upheld a man's argument that the financial remedy order made on his divorce should have been set aside because the wife had given inaccurate evidence about an important asset.

The couple had met in Singapore, where the wife was living and working, in 2005 and had married the following year. They lived in an apartment the wife had purchased using funds from her Central Provident Fund (CPF) account, a mandatory savings scheme in Singapore funded by contributions from the individual and their employer.

In 2013 they moved to England after the husband found employment here. The marriage came to an end in 2019.

The husband accepted that the wife and their child should remain living in the former matrimonial home in England. In assessing what funds the wife could raise to meet their housing needs, the District Judge considered that there was little or no equity in the apartment in Singapore because, if it were sold and the amount borrowed from her CPF account repaid, there would be virtually nothing left.

Key to the District Judge's reasoning was the wife's evidence that she could not access any of the funds in her CPF account until she was 65. However, the husband later discovered that if the apartment were sold, the sale proceeds would be used to top up her account only to the 'full retirement sum' set by the CPF Board, with the excess – about £325,000 – automatically being repaid to her.

The husband contended that the wife had misrepresented her financial circumstances, and the District Judge's finding that all of the funds would go back to the CPF was plainly incorrect. After his appeal to the Family Court was dismissed, he made a further appeal to the Court of Appeal.

The Court concluded that the Family Court should have admitted the new evidence and allowed the appeal so that the matter could be determined on the true facts. It was accepted that the wife's evidence had been inaccurate, and it was necessary to understand the nature and extent of the inaccuracy in order to decide whether the financial remedy order should be set aside. The CPF account was the wife's resource and, in the Court of Appeal's view, she could not avoid the consequences of her misrepresentation by saying that the husband could have discovered earlier that her evidence was inaccurate.

The Court concluded that it was clear that the financial remedy order had to be set aside and the matter remitted for rehearing.