A Vietnamese woman stands to inherit half of her late husband’s estate after the Court of Appeal declined to declare their 2011 marriage of convenience void on Wednesday (21 October).
The marriage predates Section 11A of the Women’s Charter that voids marriages of convenience solemnised on or after 1 October 2016. That provision does not apply retrospectively.
Son Sought to Exclude Wife From Inheritance
Mr Cheng Meng Koon married Ms Dang Lan Anh on 26 January 2011, following a divorce from his first wife.
He continued living with his sister and did not tell his family about the marriage. He died on 8 January 2012 without a valid will.
His family only found out about the marriage in March 2012, when the Insolvency and Public Trustee’s Office wrote to say Ms Dang, as his widow, had a claim to some of his CPF savings.
In October 2024, his son from his first marriage, Mr Cheng Tze Tzuen, applied to have the marriage declared void and Ms Dang excluded from his father’s estate. The High Court made no order on his application, prompting his appeal.
Majority Found No Basis to Void Marriage
Justices Debbie Ong and Ang Cheng Hock held that the grounds for declaring a marriage void were confined to those in the Women’s Charter.
Criminal offences connected with a marriage of convenience did not, by themselves, invalidate the marriage.
Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon disagreed. He would have declared the marriage void on the basis that it had not been solemnised under a valid marriage licence.
The appeal was dismissed by a majority. How the estate will be handled and shared out wasn’t part of the appeal, so the court left that question alone.
Why the Marriage Date Matters
Under Section 11A, a marriage is void if it was entered into to help a party gain an immigration advantage and a reward or inducement was given for it, unless both parties reasonably believed it would be a genuine marriage.
Its commencement date is crucial here: it applies to marriages solemnised on or after 1 October 2016. The couple married more than five years earlier.
