Mum who fled Singapore with daughter, 9, before custody hearing faces arrest

A warrant of arrest has been issued against a woman who fled Singapore with her nine-year-old daughter before a custody hearing.

This comes after the 48-year-old mother repeatedly flouted court orders, such as those giving the father time to spend with the child after the divorce and to take the child to see the High Court Judge, who wanted to interview her.

In a judgment released on July 25, Justice Choo Han Teck said the mother remains “a fugitive of her own volition”.

The judge noted that the woman has not returned to Singapore since the warrant of arrest was issued in May. He said that if the woman applies to rescind the warrant of arrest, it is likely that it would be granted if she provides an undertaking that she will return to Singapore and take the child to Court.

The warrant of arrest caps a protracted battle over issues such as division of assets and access. Access orders are court orders that give the parent who does not live with the child time to spend with the child post-divorce.

The Singaporean woman, whose current employment status is unknown, wed an American doctor in 2013. They lived in the United States after their marriage and have one daughter. After their marriage soured, she brought her child back to Singapore in 2018 and started divorce proceedings.

Initially, former Judicial Commissioner Tan Puay Boon gave joint custody of the child to both parents, and care and control to the mother. The parent who has care and control lives with the child, and makes decisions on the child’s daily needs.

The terms of the father’s access include video calls three times a week with the child, and three weeks of access during the child’s summer holiday – alternating between when the father will come to Singapore to spend time with her, and when the child will spend time with her father in the United States.

However, the father alleged that the mother was not co-operative, and among other things, she would hang up when he called or pressure the girl to hang up on her father.

Justice Choo wrote: “He said that the mother’s conduct amounted to parental alienation, which had caused the video access arrangements to ‘deteriorate to the point where the child doesn’t talk at all anymore’.”

The man had told the judge the ex-wife had turned off the microphone and speaker so that both father and daughter cannot hear each other. She even covered the child’s face so that the father cannot even see her.

When the dispute between both parties continued to worsen, the father applied to the court to vary the access orders. 

Justice Choo ordered the mother to take the child to the United States for two weeks from Christmas Eve 2022 to visit the father. He also asked to interview the child in February.

The woman breached both orders. In fact, she did not take the child to see the judge on both occasions when he asked to interview the girl.

The father applied for another round of committal proceedings, which is to penalise the mother for not complying with a court order, as she had failed to take the girl to visit him in the US.

A few days before the May 8 Court hearing to hear the father’s applications to start committal proceedings against the mother and for custody matters, she sent the father an e-mail suggesting she had taken the child to France. 

She also e-mailed the Registry of the Family Justice Courts and the father to say that they were unable to return to Singapore as the child was unwell, without providing a medical certificate or indicating the illness.

On May 8, the judge issued a warrant of arrest against the mother for failing to attend court, and he adjourned the hearing date to May 12. The mother was still absent from court on the adjourned date, and she claimed the child was still unwell.

Justice Choo, who described the mother as defiant, said: “The judge is not pampering his own ego by punishing the offender. He is upholding the honour of the office and maintaining respect not so much to him but that office.

“I was thus left with no alternative but to order a warrant for the mother’s arrest,” he said.

The judge also asked the Child Protective Service (CPS) under the Ministry of Social and Family Development to take the child into custody, as an interim arrangement, when she returned to Singapore.

This was because the woman would be arrested when she returns to Singapore. The judge ordered the CPS to care for the child in the interim period.

In July, both the man and the woman appeared for a hearing through zoom. The woman refused to reveal her location, claiming that there was a warrant of arrest against her.

The man applied to the courts to have the child live with him, instead of her mother, and for sole custody of the child. The judge granted him those orders.

Justice Choo said: “I trust that having the experience he had, the father will comply with the terms of access for the mother now that the roles are reversed. But first, mother and child have to be located.”

Lawyer Gloria James-Civetta, who is the man’s lawyer, explained that in such situations, unless the man is able to locate his ex-wife and daughter in a country that recognises and gives effect to Singapore’s court order, he is likely to have to wait until the woman returns to Singapore on her own volition for the Singapore court orders to take effect.