The High Court says the woman had for eight years concealed her remarriage overseas to continue collecting monthly spousal maintenance.
Justice Evrol Mariette Peters ordered the woman and her new husband jointly and severally to return RM310,000 unlawfully collected from her former spouse between 2012 and 2019.
She also ordered that they pay the ex-husband RM400,000 in aggravated damages and another RM300,000 in exemplary damages.
In addition, Peters, now a Court of Appeal judge, ordered the couple to pay the ex-husband RM200,000 in costs.
In her 27-page grounds of judgment, Peters said the woman had fraudulently obtained several consent orders following the dissolution of her marriage to the ex-husband in 2011.
“The woman’s deliberate concealment of her remarriage under Section 82 of the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act extinguished her very entitlement to spousal maintenance from her ex-husband and vitiated the consent at its root,” she said.
Peters held that the agreement in respect of the payments, which formed the basis of several consent orders recorded by the court, was premised fundamentally on the woman’s fraudulent misrepresentation that she had not remarried.
Any consent order founded on a material falsehood could not stand, the judge said, adding that allowing it to remain enforceable would only perpetuate injustice.
“The fraud did not merely taint the discrete provision for spousal maintenance. It spread like a contagion, infecting the consent orders (recorded by the court) as a whole,” Peters said.
The judge acknowledged that there was no express provision in the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976 which specifically empowered the court to order the reimbursement of spousal maintenance.
“Nevertheless, it did not follow that the court was, thereby, rendered powerless,” she added.
Peters accordingly set aside the entire set of consent orders previously recorded by the court.
The judge awarded aggravated damages to the woman’s ex-husband over his 51-day incarceration for alleged contempt of court, noting the deprivation of liberty, reputational harm and emotional distress it had caused.
Peters also awarded exemplary damages to punish the wrongdoer for “contumelious and reprehensible conduct”, and to serve as a deterrent to others contemplating acting in a similar manner.
“In the present case, the conduct of the woman was egregious and utterly reprehensible,” she said, adding that on each occasion, the woman misrepresented material facts and deceived the court.
Peters said the woman had “thumbed her nose at the court” and displayed a calculated, contumelious and brazen disregard for its authority, orders, and the solemn duty of candour owed in judicial proceedings.
The facts of the case revealed that the ex-husband and the woman were married in 1994 and had four children, all now adults.
The woman walked out of the matrimonial home in 2008, citing the irretrievable breakdown of their relationship, allegedly due to cruel acts on her ex-husband’s part.
However, he rejected the accusations and instead asserted that the marriage collapsed due to the woman’s own adulterous relationship with her current husband.
In 2011, the High Court granted the woman’s petition for divorce and ordered payment of spousal and child maintenance.
Two months after the decree absolute was issued, the woman married her current husband in Sri Lanka without the knowledge of her ex-husband.
Between 2012 and 2019, although she had remarried, the woman repeatedly initiated contempt proceedings against her ex-husband to enforce maintenance payments.
The proceedings gave rise to several consent orders, which even resulted in the ex-husband’s imprisonment, allegedly for contempt of court.
In October 2019, the ex-husband discovered that the woman had remarried.
He filed a writ challenging the entire foundation of the woman’s financial claims on grounds that it was built on fraud and collusion with her current husband. - FMT
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