SINGAPORE: A High Court judge on Tuesday (Jan 21) dismissed a woman’s bid to contest her husband’s will, which left her nothing upon his death in 2015.
The man’s will stated that he did not want to leave anything to the woman because he only married her “to help her extend her stay (in Singapore) as an accompanying person to her child”, who was studying here.
The wife is a Chinese national who came to Singapore on a long-term visit pass with her daughter. She became her husband’s tenant in 2011, and married him in 2013.
The husband was the sole owner of the three-room flat where they lived together. When he died, he left all his assets, including the flat, to his half-sister.
The wife previously challenged the validity of the will, but her claim was dismissed by a district judge.
On Tuesday, Justice Choo Han Teck dismissed her appeal against that decision.
MAKING OF THE WILL
The husband, a diabetic, was hospitalised after feeling breathless in July 2015. He received surgery to amputate his left foot on Aug 12, 2015, and purportedly signed his will five days later. He died in September 2015.
The judge considered evidence from one of the man’s friends who claimed to have known him for more than 45 years.
According to this friend, the man said his wife had not visited him in the hospital. Realising that his wife did not care for him, he told the friend that his marriage was a sham and that he did not wish to leave his flat to his wife.
The friend testified that the man asked him to help prepare his will. The friend made the arrangements, and the man signed his will in hospital. The executor, who was the man’s nephew, and two witnesses were present.
The will was not executed in ordinary circumstances, so Justice Choo found it could not be presumed that the man had the mental capacity to make decisions about it at the time.
The man “may likely still have been affected by the physical and emotional pain of losing his forefoot”, said the judge, and might not have been in the right frame of mind.
However, medical records describing the man’s alert and comfortable condition on Aug 17, 2015, pointed towards him having the mental capacity to make such decisions, the judge said.
The judge also believed the evidence of those present at the signing of the will, who testified that the man was alert, able to recognise them and spoke normally to them.
He noted that these people did not appear to have anything to gain from the will, as none of them were directly related to its beneficiary, the man’s half-sister.
“In the circumstances, I do not think that the district judge was wrong to find that the deceased had testamentary capacity to make the will,” said Justice Choo.
The wife learnt of her husband’s will a few days after his death.
On Feb 16, 2016, the man’s nephew went to the flat and told her to move out by Mar 5, 2016, as a court had purportedly ordered that the flat be handed over to the man’s half-sister.
The wife subsequently filed a suit to invalidate the will.
WAS THE MARRIAGE A SHAM?
In his judgment, Justice Choo made reference to what the husband and wife said about their marriage in news articles by journalists from a local Chinese newspaper who interviewed the couple in 2014.
The man was reported as saying that he and his wife had not consummated their marriage and never held hands, that he addressed her as “miss”, and that they barely spoke more than a few words to each other every day.
He also claimed he could not tolerate his wife’s behaviour after they got married, which included not making payments for rent and utilities. He said he had suggested annulling their marriage, but she refused to.
The woman denied that her husband had made such a suggestion. She said that she was truly in love with him and he gave her a sense of home. She was reported as asking why she needed to pay him rent as his wife.
She also claimed to have framed and hung their marriage certificate up in their flat “out of anger” because her husband “did not dare to acknowledge that he was married”.
The woman was distressed by the articles, and started paying her husband rent in November 2014.
The man later allowed her to rent out one of the rooms in the flat, and asked her to pay him S$600 (US$441) a month once the room was rented out. She also paid for utilities and covered taxes.
In a letter laying out this arrangement, the man said the woman would be responsible for day-to-day activities such as housekeeping and accompanying him to medical appointments.
Justice Choo said the news articles were inadmissible hearsay evidence as the journalists did not testify in court. He noted that the district judge may have mistakenly considered their contents.
The burden was still on the woman, as the claimant, to show that her husband’s will was irrational, said the judge.
She could do this by showing that she did not need to marry her husband to extend her stay in Singapore, or that her marriage was not a sham.
The woman claimed that she could have stayed in Singapore until 2018 on her long-term visit pass, and did not need to extend her stay.
But Justice Choo said the woman could have been looking to stay beyond 2018, in which case marrying her husband would have increased her chances of staying, or of her daughter getting permanent residency.
Justice Choo also found that the woman had not shown enough evidence to prove her marriage was not a sham.
She relied on evidence from two friends about how she and the man had interacted before and on the day of their marriage. But they did not give evidence on the couple’s interactions after the marriage, so this did not help her.
In contrast, the man’s friend and nephew both testified that the man had told them his marriage was a sham.
The judge also found insufficient evidence that the will was forged, although a forensic handwriting analysis of a certified true copy of the will could not conclusively prove that the man’s signature on the document was authentic.
Parties have not been able to find the original copy of the will.
Justice Choo found that “apart from making a stab in the dark with bare allegations”, the woman also failed to support her claim that her husband’s friend, nephew or siblings exercised undue influence over him in the making of the will.
The judge observed that “much trouble and uncertainty could have been avoided if the respondents had procured a doctor to serve as an independent witness to a testator who was recovering from a major surgery”.
“Moreover, drawing up one’s will without professional help, especially at one’s deathbed, is not wise,” he said.
