Mr Cheng died on 8 January 2012 without a will. His family learnt that he had a wife only when the Insolvency and Public Trustee’s Office wrote to them on 2 March 2012 about her share of his CPF moneys. They had never met her. In 2024 they learnt that she had been deported in 2011.
Twelve years on, his son asked the High Court to declare the marriage void. If the court agreed, the widow would take nothing. On 21 October 2026, the Court of Appeal gave its answer in Cheng Tze Tzuen v Dang Lan Anh [2026] SGCA 42. The marriage stands.
The facts the son relied on
The marriage took place on 26 January 2011. The widow, a Vietnamese national, did not enter an appearance, so the court set out the facts from the son’s account. He said his father never mentioned the marriage, that no relatives attended, and that his father kept living with his sister in their HDB flat. He added that loan shark harassment stopped during the year of the marriage, and that the widow stayed away throughout his father’s terminal illness.
The estate was modest: a 14% share in the HDB flat, and CPF moneys with no nomination. As the deceased’s wife, the respondent stood entitled to half of the estate.
The legal question
Section 11A of the Women’s Charter 1961 makes a marriage void where a party enters it knowing that its purpose is to obtain an immigration advantage, and gratification is offered, given or received as an inducement. That provision applies only to marriages solemnised on or after 1 October 2016. Taking the son’s account as given, this marriage had the features of a marriage of convenience. It was solemnised more than five years too early for the provision to apply.
So the question was whether some other ground in the Charter could achieve the same result.
The majority’s answer
Debbie Ong JAD, with Ang Cheng Hock JCA, held that it could not. Three points carry the decision.
First, section 105 lists the grounds on which a marriage is void, and the list is exhaustive. A third party such as the son cannot ask the court to add to it.
Second, the son relied on two earlier High Court decisions, Gian Bee Choo v Meng Xianhui and Kee Cheong Keng v Dinh Thi Thu Hien. Those cases reasoned that parties who hid an illegal purpose from the Registrar obtained an invalid marriage licence, and that the marriage was void for that reason. The Court of Appeal disagreed. It said the approach reads “lawful impediment” too widely and brings in a new ground by a side door. The court held that neither case is good law.
Third, public policy cannot fill the gap. The scope of that policy is for Parliament, which acted only in 2016, and section 11A was not meant to operate retrospectively. The Charter also penalises false declarations under section 37, so the majority did not accept that its ruling invites abuse.
The dissent
Menon CJ would have allowed the appeal. He agreed that section 105 is exhaustive and did not rest his view on public policy. His point was narrower. One ground in section 105 is the absence of a valid marriage licence, and in his view a licence obtained by concealing an illegal purpose is not valid. On that reading, the 2011 marriage was void.
The disagreement was over how to read the Charter, not over whether such marriages are undesirable.
What this means in practice
The date of solemnisation matters. For a marriage of convenience before 1 October 2016, a challenge based on section 11A or on the licence reasoning will not succeed after this decision.
Suspicion is not a ground. The son’s evidence was uncontested. It did not change the result, because the law gave the court no ground on which to use it.
Intestacy follows the marriage certificate. The widow’s entitlement came from her status as a spouse. A person who wants an estate to pass differently should have a valid will. CPF moneys sit outside the estate, so a separate CPF nomination is needed. Mr Cheng made neither.
The estate itself was not decided. Distribution was not a ground of appeal, so the Court of Appeal said nothing on it.
Closing thoughts
The decision does not endorse marriages of convenience. It says that a court cannot create a ground for voiding a marriage that Parliament has not written, however unattractive the facts. Families who expect a different outcome on death usually need to have decided it in a will, a CPF nomination or a trust, while the person can still decide.
If you would like to review your will, CPF nominations or how your estate would pass on intestacy, our team at OTP Law Corporation is happy to talk you through your options.
