S'pore woman divorces man, seeks maintenance for child from other man she claims is real father

A woman who was granted maintenance for her child after divorcing her husband is now seeking up to S$1.07 million in maintenance from another man, claiming that he is the biological father of the child.

This alleged father asked the court to strike out the application, which was filed in October 2025 under the Guardianship of Infants Act.

On Oct 8, 2025, the woman had filed an application asking for the alleged biological father to pay S$8,926 in monthly maintenance or a lump sum of S$1.07 million for the child.

However, the court ultimately dismissed this request, with the assistant registrar Jasmine Loo stating that it is not in the interest of justice to strike out the woman's application.

The woman's account

According to the woman, the biological mother of the child in question, she and the alleged biological father first met through an introduction agency.

A court judgement dated Apr. 23, 2026, seen by Mothership, stated that when she became pregnant and told him about it, he allegedly denied responsibility and cut off all contact with her.

She instead received support from another man who was an ex-boyfriend at the time, and she married him later.

As the alleged biological father refused to acknowledge paternity, the woman decided to put the name of her husband as the father on the child's birth certificate, which the husband agreed to.

The couple also had another child, whose paternity is not disputed.

After they got divorced, the interim judgment of divorce granted joint custody of both children, provided that the ex-husband would be the sole provider of maintenance.

The man's argument

The woman also asked the alleged biological father to submit to a paternity test.

If it found him to be the biological father, she asked the court to declare him the child's biological father, and that he bear the costs of the paternity testing.

To this, the alleged biological father argued that the woman had no evidence that he was the child's biological father.

As such, he asked the court to strike out the entirety of her application and claimed it was an abuse of process of the court.

He also claimed it was in the interest of justice to strike out the woman's application as the claim was supposedly legally unsustainable.

This is because the woman and her ex-husband had entered into an interim judgement by consent, and this provided that the ex-husband was to bear 100 per cent of the child's expenses.

In addition, with regard to ordering a paternity test, the alleged biological father countered that even if the court had the power to do so, he believed it constituted an abuse of process by allowing the woman to doubly claim maintenance for the child from two individuals.

The court's decision

Reasonable cause of action

In that regard, the assistant registrar found that the woman's application disclosed a reasonable cause of action.

Since the woman claimed to have had sexual relations with the alleged biological father in the same month that she married her ex-husband, this led the alleged biological father to raise concerns about the credibility of her narrative.

He argued that the woman discovering her pregnancy, becoming estranged from the alleged biological father, and then reconciling with and eventually marrying her ex-husband within one month was implausible.

Threshold for striking out

The assistant registrar noted, however, that the threshold for striking out was whether the application demonstrated some chance of success or raised a question fit to be decided at trial.

To that, she emphasised that this was a high threshold and a case would not be struck out even if it was weak and unlikely to succeed.

There was at least a question fit to be tried of whether the child was the biological daughter of the alleged biological father.

She was born between nine and 10 months after the woman claimed to have sex with the alleged biological father.

The alleged biological father also argued that since the child could be presumed to be the ex-husband's child or by virtue of the child's birth certificate, the onus should not fall on him to prove that he was not her father.

Though the assistant registrar accepted that in the main application, it was the woman who bore the burden of proving that the child was the alleged biological father's daughter, the alleged biological father himself bore the burden of showing that the application had no chance of success.

The assistant registrar was of the view that this high threshold was not met.

Whether court has power to order paternity test

She also found that there is a question fit to be determined on the court’s powers to order a paternity test.

The alleged biological father argued that this should have been raised during divorce proceedings between the woman and her ex-husband.

He also claimed that the woman had not cited reasons as to why her application was only filed now.

To that, the woman countered that she had not been aware of her legal rights to maintenance until she was advised, and that she only commenced these proceedings after the alleged biological father denied paternity in June 2025.

The assistant registrar, in finding that there was no abuse of court process by the woman, though the alleged biological father claimed that was the case, dismissed his application to strike out the woman's application.

Therefore, the man, having lost his application, was ordered to pay the woman costs of S$2,000, with disbursements of S$150.

The court will determine whether to order a paternity test and whether the alleged biological father should pay maintenance at a future hearing, CNA reported.