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SINGAPORE \u2013 Instead of transferring $6,650 to fintech platform Wise, James Jonathan accidentally sent the money to his ex-wife Adel Ng because he had saved her in his contact list as \u201cWife\u201d.<\/p>\n
What followed was a six-month legal dispute that involved a police report, an unsuccessful application to strike out the man\u2019s claim and allegations of misconduct against his lawyers.<\/p>\n
The ex-wife has now been ordered to pay $6,500 in legal costs after a magistrate\u2019s court found that her conduct was \u201chighly unreasonable\u201d and that she had unnecessarily prolonged the dispute.<\/p>\n
In a judgment released on Sept 7, Deputy Registrar Mark Lim said the case could have been resolved immediately after the mistaken transfer.<\/p>\n
Instead, the $6,650 ended up with the police and the case went to court.<\/p>\n
The former couple had divorced in 2021 but remained in contact over matters, including access to their child.<\/p>\n
After Jonathan mistakenly transferred the money to Ng on Dec 7, 2025, he sent her at least 10 e-mails between Dec 7 and Dec 15, asking her to return the money.<\/p>\n
She did not reply.<\/p>\n
It was only after the man sent a letter of demand through his lawyers on Dec 17 that she responded through her lawyers.<\/p>\n
But rather than simply returning the money, the woman on Dec 25 claimed that she was concerned that she was a victim of a possible scam and asked for extensive information, including the man\u2019s identity number, a copy of an identity document, the source of the money, why the transfer had been made in error and why it was urgent that the money be returned.<\/p>\n
She asked him to indemnify her against \u201cany and all liabilities and expenses\u201d arising from her returning the money.<\/p>\n
The next day, Dec 26, Ng deposited the $6,650 with the Singapore Police Force.<\/p>\n
In her police report, she said she wanted to return the money \u201cunder cover of this police report\u201d to avoid any misunderstanding or involvement with money from a questionable source or \u201cbad actors (e.g., scammers and money launderers)\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said she believed the police were the proper authority to determine whether the claim for the money was legitimate.<\/p>\n
On Dec 30, Jonathan sued Ng to seek the return of the $6,650.<\/p>\n
In her defence, the woman described herself as a \u201cpassive recipient\u201d of money from an \u201cunknown and unverifiable source\u201d and said she believed there was a real possibility that she was receiving scam messages.<\/p>\n
But the court was unconvinced.<\/p>\n
\u201cInsofar as the defendant justifies her conduct by claiming that she was concerned that she was \u2018confronted with a possible scam\u2019, this beggars belief,\u201d said the deputy registrar.<\/p>\n
The two had previously corresponded by e-mail using the same addresses, the court noted. If she had any genuine concern about whether the e-mails were really from her former husband, nothing would have stopped her from checking with him directly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a case of a complete stranger seeking the return of monies wrongly transferred,\u201d said the deputy registrar.<\/p>\n
The court also found that her requests for information on Dec 25 did not appear to be a genuine attempt to establish the man\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n
Rather, they appear calculated to vex her ex-husband, the deputy registrar said.<\/p>\n
The requests were excessive, including demands for the source of the money, the reasons for the error, an identity document and wide indemnities.<\/p>\n
More importantly, the woman did not appear to have genuinely been waiting for a response.<\/p>\n
She made her police report and deposited the money with the police the very next day, without giving the man a reasonable opportunity to respond.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt also bears noting that the request was made to the (ex-husband\u2019s) solicitors on Christmas Day, when they could not reasonably have been expected to be working,\u201d said the deputy registrar.<\/p>\n
The dispute continued after the lawsuit was filed.<\/p>\n
In May 2026, the woman applied to the court to strike out the man\u2019s claim for the return of the money. The court described the application as \u201cill-conceived and without merit\u201d, noting that she had failed to identify any specific ground for striking out the claim.<\/p>\n
The deputy registrar said it appeared she had \u201cretaliated\u201d after the man filed his own application to strike out her defence.<\/p>\n
She also made what the court described as \u201cgrave allegations\u201d against the man and his lawyers, claiming that his lawyer had breached an undertaking to file a supplementary affidavit before a deadline and that the man had breached court directions to do the same.<\/p>\n
The allegations prompted the court to call an in-person hearing at short notice, after which it found her allegations to be without merit.<\/p>\n
The woman apologised \u201cunreservedly\u201d to the court and the man\u2019s lawyer over the allegation concerning the solicitor.<\/p>\n
The former couple eventually agreed to settle the substantive dispute in June, leaving only the issue of legal costs.<\/p>\n
The police later confirmed that the $6,650 had been returned to the man on June 26.<\/p>\n
In deciding the costs, Lim said Ng\u2019s conduct before and after the lawsuit had been unreasonable, causing the action and unnecessarily prolonging it.<\/p>\n
The deputy registrar also rejected her argument that the lawsuit was unnecessary, as she had already deposited the money with the police.<\/p>\n
There was no legal authority to support the argument that depositing money with the police was an absolute defence to a civil claim, the court said.<\/p>\n
The court also rejected her argument that she had made genuine efforts to settle the dispute.<\/p>\n
One settlement letter accused the man of bringing the proceedings for an improper motive and of abusing the court process.<\/p>\n
Another proposed resolving the case without costs while also saying that the woman might seek to recover her own costs.<\/p>\n
And one day after she sent a draft agreement that was close to the eventual settlement, she made the allegations against the man and his lawyers.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaken in the round, the court finds that the defendant\u2019s conduct was highly unreasonable,\u201d said the deputy registrar.<\/p>\n
The deputy registrar said the former husband was \u201cunderstandably aggrieved\u201d that a mistaken transfer to his ex-wife, which could have been remedied immediately, had instead escalated into a lawsuit lasting well over half a year.<\/p>\n
The court ordered the woman to pay $6,500 in costs, plus GST. The total amount, $7,085, exceeded the original $6,650 that had triggered the dispute.<\/p>\n
The case was a reminder that parties who fail to act reasonably could face \u201cserious consequences\u201d, including significant costs orders, the judge said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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SINGAPORE \u2013 Instead of transferring $6,650 to fintech platform Wise, James Jonathan accidentally sent the money to his ex-wife Adel Ng because he had saved…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/73344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}