Court orders businessman to pay backdated maintenance after paternity test rules ex-employee’s kids are his

The father offered no money for holidays but the mother sought S$1,000. The judge said it would be reasonable to pay S$400, for weekly travel to Malaysia to minimise expenses for food and groceries.

Judge Teh said the man had never paid maintenance for the children.

“The duty of a parent to maintain a child is rooted in biological fact – a parent should, without more, care for his or her own flesh and blood, where the child is unable to fend for himself,” he said.

However, he said knowledge was relevant in deciding the question of whether there had been neglect of the duty to maintain the child.

It would seem unreasonable to hold a parent as liable for neglect, if he had not even been aware that he was the parent of the child, said the judge.

The mother had provided evidence in the form of photos of the man with her children. One photo showed the man posing with the daughter at a restaurant on her birthday in October 2022, while others showed him carrying her in a mall or with her at the zoo.

Judge Teh said the photos were piecemeal indications that the man had held himself out as a parent, and it was not unusual for him to tend to the children as he was in a relationship with their mother until June 2023.

While he might have suspected he was the girl’s father, this would not “rise to the requisite knowledge that he was the biological parent”, said Judge Teh.

The court was shown text messages exchanged between the pair in June 2023 when their relationship was on the rocks.

In one text, the woman asked the man to “please ensure the transfer of the child’s expenses of $3,000 to my account on time every 1st of the month. You have not done so for this month – please do so quickly!”

In response, the man asked her not to be “so extreme”. While there was no denial, it was unclear which child was being referred to in the message and whether it meant that the status of the other child was in question, said the judge.

He said there was evidence that pointed the other way, especially a statutory declaration the mother had given in 2016 stating that her daughter’s “biological father who is of Malaysia nationality is no longer in contact with me”.

She also stated that his name and whereabouts were unknown.

The judge said that it must be assumed that the woman was stating the truth in her 2016 statutory declaration, which she tendered to the Housing Board in 2020 as part of her request to buy a resale flat while retaining two private residential properties in Malaysia.

This declaration was known to the respondent at the time, and it was undisputed that the woman did have a Malaysian boyfriend.

The judge also considered that the man had passed a red packet to the woman’s daughter in June 2023, and forwarded information on direct school admissions in May 2023 to the woman.

However, he found that the woman had not proven that the man had neglected to provide reasonable maintenance in the period before she applied for maintenance. Therefore, he backdated the maintenance only from the time of her application and not before.

STRUGGLING TO MAKE ENDS MEET: MAN’S LAWYERS

The man’s counsel had said that his take-home salary was S$5,438. As a company director, his salary was “heavily dependent” on the company’s performance, and the company was making a loss, said the lawyers.

They added that he had to borrow from banks and friends to fund his business expenditures and living expenses, with over S$250,000 in debt to friends and family and total debts and liabilities of over S$2.3 million.

However, the judge agreed with the woman’s lawyers that the man was “a man of means” notwithstanding the purportedly poor financial state of his businesses.

For example, some of the loans he took were “friendly loans” not subject to strict repayment terms, such as one from his own wife and another from his mother-in-law.

“While I was persuaded that he did have certain formal liabilities with financial institutions, the preponderance of the evidence suggested that the respondent had enjoyed a significant degree of free play and flexibility in managing his incomings and outgoings, through his ability to access both his personal and corporate accounts,” said the judge.

“It followed that even if he was in a net negative position, he was more likely than not, able to raise and rustle up sums of monies when the need occasioned.”

The man’s lawyers said he was “struggling to make ends meet without sacrificing the lifestyle enjoyed by his family”. The man also has two older children from his marriage in their mid-teens who are likely to incur more expenses as they go on to tertiary education.

However, the judge said the man has a duty to maintain all his biological children, and would need to make changes in his lifestyle to support the maintenance payments.

The judge said he “did not discount the struggles of a single mother having to bring up two children”, but noted that the evidence did not show that the mother was in “that tight of a financial bind” between March 2021 and March 2024.

Her salary was mostly still at S$5,000 to S$6,000 a month during that period, but her financial situation worsened after she broke up with the businessman and left his company.

“Indeed, it was telling that her request to the respondent for S$3,000 for the child took place then – the court had not seen evidence of earlier requests of such money,” said the judge.

The woman was unemployed from June to October in 2023.

As for the cost of paternity testing, the judge said it was not “unreasonable” for the man to foot the full cost.

He said that the man was “at least happy to go along with the status quo”, going out with the children and posing with them for photographs until the couple ended their relationship.

“While he would have at least suspected or wondered about the paternity, he did not issue a flat-out denial when the applicant sought S$3,000 for the child via text message – at the terminal stage of the parties’ relationship,” said the judge.

The request to resolve the question of paternity arose only after the woman applied for child maintenance.

“At that juncture in the life of the case, it could even be said that the respondent needed to know the result more,” said the judge.