Woman goes on $70k shopping spree while marriage on the rocks
Tan Ooi Boon for The Straits Times
After her marriage hit the rocks, a woman went on a six-month shopping spree and ended up spending about $70,000 on home furnishings, a holiday and luxurious designer items.
Her antics made her ex-husband cry foul as he described her over-50 expenses as "extravagant and flagrant withdrawal of funds" that were made without his consent and so should be returned to the pool for sharing.
But the wife countered that these items were "were incurred in the ordinary course of the family's lifestyle" and were not "artificially inflated to deplete the matrimonial assets".
For instance, she said over $20,000 were spent on household furnishings because she and her two young sons had to move to their new home after the split. Another $10,000 were actually spent on their kids so that they could go for their holidays and other leisure activities, such as going to the concert of their favourite rock band Coldplay.
She also struck back at her ex-husband by asking him to refund $12,000 that he had spent buying cryptocurrency for his brother.
Rule of spending during divorce
When a divorce is imminent or in progress, warring spouses do not have free hands in spending their money because all matrimonial assets that they have at the time are up for sharing.
Indeed, expenses that were spent earlier might even be added back to the sharing pool if these were considered "wasteful" and were done to whittle away matrimonial assets.
Of course, when examining the parties' accounts, the courts will not engage in bean counting and would generally only focus on exorbitant expenses that are deemed unusual or unreasonable.
So daily, run-of-the-mill expenses such as buying groceries and paying for household bills are generally excluded because the parties are permitted to continue to spend on essential items and reasonably maintain their existing lifestyles.
Of course, both sides can spend on more expensive items, such as buying phones or household appliances if they have agreed on such expenses. Even so, the spending must be reasonable because it would be hard to justify a "dramatic escalation in the frequency of such financial outlays", such as buying a new phone a few times within a year.
How the court rules
In this case, High Court Judge Teh Hwee Hwee noted that the wife's $20,000 spending on new furnishings did not qualify as run-of-the-mill expenses, but the amount was not added back to the pool because her ex-husband had indirectly consented to this.
He knew that his ex-wife and children would be moving into a new rental apartment and that the purchased items were not inconsistent with the standard of living that they had been accustomed to.
Similarly, the judge also approved the $10,000 that was spent on the kids who went for a holiday in Bali, because their parents had been taking them on such travels before the split. When the wife sent photographs of the kids having fun, their father also did not object but responded enthusiastically with remarks such as "they must be having a ball" and "awesome".
But the judge drew the line on the luxury items the wife bought as she had spent over $37,000 when divorce was imminent. Most of these expenses were incurred at designer boutiques, clubs, bars, florists and alcohol shops.
The wife might have a case to support her spending if she could show that such expenses were consistent with her previous lifestyle.
But she could not produce any evidence to show how often she indulged in such purchases. Indeed, her social media posts which showed 17 purchases of "luxury branded items" in just six months appeared to be disproportionate to her previous pattern of gift-giving or personal spending.
So the judge ordered her to return the $37,000 to the matrimonial pool. Similarly, the husband also had to return $12,000 that was spent on cryptocurrency.
In the end, the husband, who earns a monthly salary of $44,000, was given a 72.5 per cent share of the assets as he was the main breadwinner as compared to the wife's $3,000 monthly salary.
As the total pool of assets was valued at $3.7 million, the husband was entitled to about $2.7 million while his ex-wife was given $1 million.
