Abstract:
In 2017, the Singapore Court of Appeal moved away from using the broad-brush approach for single-income marriages. While the court has definitively laid out that long single-income marriages will tend towards an equal division of matrimonial assets from past precedents, there is currently no guidance for short single-income marriages. What results is that the law on the division of matrimonial assets will require different approaches for different types of families. This article firstly seeks to alleviate and rationalise the fear towards short marriages, and secondly, proposes that the law should be streamlined into a single approach for this area of law by requiring the division of matrimonial assets to incline towards equality while providing a discretion for judges where the outcome is inequitable.