Most of what people believe about divorce in Singapore comes from a friend who went through one, a forum thread, or an American television drama. Some of it is out of date. A good deal of it was never true here at all.
These ten beliefs are the ones that cost the most, because each of them leads someone to make a decision (moving out, signing something, not signing something, doing nothing about a will) on a false premise. Here is each one, and what the position actually is.
1. “We both agree, so we can just skip the court”
No. Only a court can dissolve a marriage. However complete your agreement, however amicable the separation, the marriage continues until the Family Justice Courts grant a judgment dissolving it. There is no private route, no registry form, and no waiting period after which a marriage lapses on its own.
What agreement does buy you is speed and cost. An uncontested case on the simplified track moves through the court process with far less friction than a contested one. But it still goes through the court, and the terms you agreed still need to be recorded in an order to be enforceable.
People who assume otherwise discover the problem years later, when they want to remarry, apply for housing, or deal with an estate, and find they were never divorced at all.
2. “The mother always gets the children”
No. There is no legal presumption in favour of mothers. The governing principle is the welfare of the child, and it is paramount. The court asks what arrangement serves this particular child, not what is customary.
Two further points get lost. First, joint custody is the usual order in Singapore. Custody concerns major decisions such as schooling, serious medical matters and religion, and the courts generally favour keeping both parents involved in them. Second, custody and care and control are different things; the parent the child lives with day to day may well be one parent while custody is shared. That distinction is explained in sole versus joint custody.
Fathers who assume the outcome is fixed often concede care and control before anyone has looked at the facts. The relevant question is who has actually been doing the caring, and it has a real answer. See custody and care and control for fathers.
3. “Assets are always split 50-50”
No. Section 112 of the Women’s Charter requires a division that is just and equitable, and that is a structured discretionary exercise rather than a formula.
The court identifies and values the matrimonial pool, weighs each party’s direct financial contributions to acquiring and improving those assets, weighs the indirect contributions of money, homemaking and childcare, and arrives at a division. Length of marriage, the presence of children, and whether it was a single-income household all feed in.
Equal division does happen, particularly in long single-income marriages where the non-earning spouse’s indirect contribution is substantial. But it is a result, not a rule, and short marriages with unequal contributions routinely produce something quite different. The framework is set out in how matrimonial assets are divided.
4. “I have to prove adultery or I cannot divorce”
No. There is a single ground, the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, proved by any one of six facts: adultery, unreasonable behaviour, desertion, three years’ separation with consent, four years’ separation, and divorce by mutual agreement.
That last one was added on 1 July 2024 and changes the picture considerably. Couples who both accept the marriage has broken down no longer need to allege fault or wait out a separation period. They prepare an agreed statement of the reasons and the efforts made, and the court considers it.
People still file behaviour particulars they do not need, which raises the temperature for no benefit. Read the six facts and what each requires and divorce by mutual agreement before deciding what to plead.
5. “If I move out, I lose the flat”
No. Leaving the matrimonial home does not forfeit your interest in it. The property remains part of the matrimonial pool and falls to be divided whoever happens to be sleeping there.
This myth keeps people in households that have become unbearable, and occasionally unsafe, for no legal reason at all. It is also not entirely without foundation, which is why it persists: moving out can affect other things. It can influence which parent the children are living with when arrangements are assessed, and if you also stop contributing to the mortgage that is a separate point against you.
So the decision matters, but for practical reasons, not because of any rule about losing the flat. Work through what moving out during a divorce actually affects before you decide either way.
6. “Maintenance is for life”
No. Spousal maintenance is neither automatic nor indefinite. The court considers a list of factors under s 114, among them the financial needs and resources of each party, earning capacity, the standard of living during the marriage, the length of the marriage and contributions made, and the direction of travel is towards self-sufficiency rather than permanent support.
Maintenance may be ordered periodically or as a lump sum, it may be nominal, and in a short marriage between two working adults it may not be ordered at all. Orders can also be varied where circumstances change materially.
Both sides tend to get this wrong in opposite directions: one expecting lifelong support, the other expecting to pay nothing. What the court actually looks at is set out in maintenance for a wife after divorce.
7. “My divorce automatically revokes my will”
No, it does not. This is the myth with the longest fuse, and it is backwards.
In Singapore, marriage generally revokes a will made beforehand, subject to limited exceptions. Divorce does not. If your will leaves everything to your spouse and appoints them executor, and you then divorce and die without making a new one, that will still stands, with your former spouse named throughout it.
The same applies to things that sit outside the will entirely: CPF nominations and insurance policy nominations survive a divorce and have to be changed separately, one by one, with each institution. See how a will is actually revoked and the full list in the admin to sort out after a divorce.
Making a new will is a short task. Leaving it undone is how an ex-spouse inherits.
8. “We lived together for years, so I have common-law rights”
No. There is no such thing as common-law marriage in Singapore. Ten years of cohabitation, shared bills and a joint life create no marital status whatsoever.
The consequences are stark. There is no claim on your partner’s assets on separation, no spousal maintenance, and no automatic inheritance if they die. The estate passes under their will or under the intestacy rules, and a cohabiting partner is not in the intestacy list. Rights over property depend on legal ownership and provable contribution, not on the relationship.
None of this is unfixable, but it has to be arranged deliberately rather than assumed: ownership structured properly, a will made, nominations completed. The position and the workarounds are set out in the legal position of unmarried couples.
9. “I can move assets into a company or overseas and they will not be found”
No, and attempting it usually makes the outcome worse.
Both parties owe a duty of full and frank disclosure of their assets and means. Where a party fails to disclose, or the disclosure is evasive, the court can draw an adverse inference, treating the undisclosed assets as existing, assuming a value, and adjusting the division accordingly. The person who hid the money ends up worse off than if they had declared it.
Transfers made to defeat a claim can also be dealt with directly, including by setting them aside or accounting for the value as if it were still in the pool. See what happens when assets are dissipated or transferred away.
Assets abroad are not outside the picture either. They can be brought into the pool and taken into account in how the Singapore assets are divided, even where enforcement abroad is awkward. See overseas assets in a Singapore divorce.
10. “The interim judgment means I am divorced”
No, and this one has criminal consequences.
Interim judgment ends the first stage: the court is satisfied the marriage has irretrievably broken down. You are still married. The marriage is dissolved only on final judgment, which cannot be granted until the minimum period after interim judgment has passed and the ancillary matters are dealt with or provided for.
Remarrying between interim and final judgment is bigamy. It also produces a second marriage that is void, with consequences for property, immigration status and any children.
Final judgment is not always automatic either: someone has to take the step of extracting it, and people forget. Read how and when final judgment is obtained, and once you have it, keep the document safe: it is what you will be asked for by HDB, ICA, banks and registries for the rest of your life. What to ask for and how is in how to prove you are divorced.
Why these particular beliefs are expensive
Each of these ten leads to an action or an omission. Believing the flat is lost keeps someone in a bad house. Believing the split is 50-50 makes them refuse a reasonable offer. Believing divorce revokes a will means no new will gets made. Believing interim judgment is the end means a marriage that is not valid.
The correction in every case is the same: check the actual position for your own facts before acting on what you heard. If you are not sure which of these applies to you, that is exactly the question a short advice session answers cheaply.
