DGX v DGY [2024] SGHC 17

This was an application under the Reciprocal Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act 1959 (2020 Rev Ed) (“the Act”) for the registration, in the General Division of the High Court of Singapore, of certain parts of an order (“the Court Order”) made by a magistrate of the Family Court of Western Australia (“the WA Family Court”). At the end of the first hearing on 26 September 2023, I adjourned the matter for the Applicant’s Counsel to conduct further research on the matter. At the adjourned hearing on 11 October 2023, after hearing further arguments, I dismissed the application. I now give my written grounds of decision.

The Claimant (“the Husband”) and Defendant (“the Wife”) were married in Singapore. They migrated to Australia with their two children in February 2009 and settled down in Perth, Western Australia. Unfortunately, the marriage broke down and they took out divorce proceedings in the WA Family Court. The divorce was granted on 2 November 2021. The Court Order, which was dated 9 May 2023, related to the division of their matrimonial property. The Husband was ordered to procure the sale of four real properties that the parties owned jointly: three properties were in Australia and one in Singapore, which was an HDB apartment (“the HDB Flat”). Upon the sale of each property, the Husband was ordered to deposit the net proceeds into an Australian bank account that he was to open jointly with the Wife (“the Joint Account”). From the terms of the Court Order, it would appear that its purpose was to authorise the Husband to sell the four properties and deposit the proceeds into the Joint Account. The Court Order did not make any determination of the division of the matrimonial property and provided for a subsequent hearing to make that determination.

It was clear from the manner in which the Court Order was drafted that the Wife had not been cooperating with the WA Family Court. Hence, para 2 of the Court Order provided that a Registrar of the Family Court may sign any document required for the purpose of setting up the Joint Account. The general tenor of the Court Order was one in which the Husband would undertake the sale of all four properties with minimal input from the Wife and the Court was prepared to conduct an “undefended hearing” at a later date if the Wife did not turn up for that hearing.

In this application, the Husband sought to register paras 9 and 10 of the Court Order, which related to the HDB Flat and provided as follows:

As the HDB Flat was jointly owned by the parties, it was obvious that, for the Husband to effect its sale, he would not be able to rely on the Court Order solely, but would need a corresponding order from a court in Singapore. Therefore, the Husband made this application under the Act. Before embarking on an analysis of the Act, it would be useful to set out a brief history of the legislation relating to the reciprocal enforcement of judgments of courts outside Singapore.

Prior to 3 October 2019, the statutory regime for enforcement of judgments of courts outside Singapore was found in the Reciprocal Enforcement of Commonwealth Judgments Act 1921 (“RECJA”) for judgments of courts of Commonwealth countries, and the Reciprocal Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act (Cap 265, 2001 Rev Ed) (the “REFJA 2001”) for courts outside of the Commonwealth. In 2019, Parliament consolidated the regime by repealing the RECJA and enacting the Reciprocal Enforcement of Foreign Judgments (Amendment Act) 2019 (Act 25 of 2019) (collectively, the “2019 amendments”) which amended the REFJA 2001 to encompass Commonwealth judgments. Further amendments were made to extend the registrability of foreign orders to include non-money judgments (which includes freezing orders and injunctions, mandatory orders and orders for specific performance), consent judgments, judicial settlements and interlocutory judgments, and of judgments from lower courts of the foreign states. However, the precise scope of enforceable court orders from any foreign court is a matter to be decided and negotiated by the Executive and will in turn depend on various factors, including the suitability of the foreign court and whether that court will grant similar treatment to the court orders of a Singapore court (Singapore Parliamentary Debates, Official Report (2 September 2019) vol 94 (Edwin Tong Chun Fai, Senior Minister of State for Law)). In Ha Chi Kut (suing as the sole executrix of the estate of Khoo Ee Liam, deceased) v Chen Aun-Li Andrew [2023] 3 SLR 283 at [51], Pang Khang Chau J similarly observed that the 2019 amendments “provided a framework for non-money judgments to be registered under the [Act] but did not have the effect of making non-money judgments of all descriptions immediately registrable” [emphasis in original omitted; emphasis added in italics].

Returning to the present application, the governing provision of the Act was s 4, the relevant parts of which stated as follows:

Section 4(1) provided that the application for registration must relate to “a judgment to which [Part 1 of the Act] applies”. Therefore, the first question to decide was whether paras 9 and 10 of the Court Order was a judgment to which Part 1 of the Act applied. To decide this, I turned to s 3 of the Act, the relevant parts of which were as follows:

This provision required that an order must be made by the Minister and published in the Gazette before the Act applies to a particular type of judgment in a particular court of any foreign country. In this regard, the Minister promulgated the Reciprocal Enforcement of Foreign Judgments (United Kingdom and the Commonwealth) Order 2023 (“the Order”) which came into operation on 1 March 2023. Paragraph 2(1) of the Order stated that, for the purposes of s 3(1)(a) of the Act, Part 1 applies to the foreign countries specified in the first column of the Schedule. Australia was one of the countries specified there. Paragraph 2(2) of the Order further stated that, for the purposes of s 3(1)(b) of the Act, the courts specified in the second column of the Schedule were recognised courts of the foreign countries in the first column of the Schedule. The WA Family Court was specified in the second column of the Schedule in relation to Australia.

I come to the critical part of the Order, which would be para 2(3). This stated that “for the purposes of s 3(1)(c) of the Act, a judgment specified in the third column of the Schedule of a recognised court specified opposite that judgment in the second column of the Schedule is a judgment to which Part 1 of the Act applies”. In relation to the WA Family Court (and indeed to all courts in Australia specified in the second column of the Schedule), the third column provided as follows:

The Applicant’s Counsel attempted to submit that this description applied to the Court Order. However it was clear that the Court Order was not a money judgment which was defined in s 2 of the Act in the following manner:

The Court Order was for the sale of the HDB Flat and did not order any party to make payment of any sum of money. This became clearer when one looks at the definition of non-money judgment in the same section:

In the second reading speech to the Reciprocal Enforcement of Foreign Judgments (Amendment) Bill (Bill No 19/2019), the Minister explained (Singapore Parliamentary Debates, Official Report (2 September 2019) vol 94 (Edwin Tong Chun Fai, Senior Minister of State for Law)):

It would appear that the extension to non-money judgments has not yet been made in relation to Australian courts.

Therefore, this court was unable to come to the assistance of the Husband and I was compelled to dismiss his application.