Today, in "PRIME: commentary", Senior Writer Andy Ho wrote an opinion piece on "Why men should not be entitled to alimony" in response to Kanwaljit Soin's proposal (read it!) that maintenance obligations be mutual. In this opinion piece, he argues against what he calls Kanwaljit Soin's "egalitarian-sounding" proposal and mentions with implicit approval the argument that since "marriage is a covenant that progressively disadvantages the woman, fairness would indicate that [only] a divorced women must be able to accrue the unrealized gains of her marriage."

Personally, I think that not only should the obligation to pay maintenance after marriage be mutual, all obligations, especially the husband's obligation to maintain a wife during marriage, should be mutual. Marriage is, as the law requires it, a partnership of equals. Section 46 of the Women's Charter demands it explicitly:

46. --(1) Upon the solemnization of marriage, the husband and the wife shall be mutually bound to co-operate with each other in safeguarding the interests of the union and in caring and providing for the children.

(2) The husband and the wife shall have the right separately to engage in any trade or profession or in social activities.

(3) The wife shall have the right to use her own surname and name separately.

(4) The husband and the wife shall have equal rights in the running of the matrimonial household.

One of the main reasons for the enactment of the Women's Charter is to raise the status of women in Singapore back in the 1960s. As you might already have noticed, Section 46(3) provides that the wife shall "have the right to use her own surname and name separately". This assumes that the husband will not have to adopt the wife's surname. Section 47(1) provides that a married woman may have an independent domicile, with no suggestion that a married may have any dependent domicile. Section 51(a) states explicitly that married woman shall be capable of acquiring, holding and disposing of, any property.

Few today can imagine how backward we were then (must have been in antiquity), when a married woman may not even own property! As one may imagine, the status of woman in 1950s Singapore must have been truly unequal, and upon marriage, probably worsened. And the PAP government then, as part of their election campaign, had promised to right the wrongs.

As Chan Choy Siang, during the eventual enactment of the Women's Charter (in 1961) said:

"We of the PAP have suffered hardship and have tried our best to fulfil our Five-Year Plan. We introduce this Bill in order to uphold the rights of women, so that all their problems will be easily resolved. At the same time, we have tried our best to discover the inequalities of men and women in the civil service. We pay great attention to women's problems. These problems were not looked after by the previous governments."

So in the context of grave social inequalities between men and women, the Women's Charter was a noble attempt to, in every way possible, to require husbands to treat their wives as equal partners. It was okay during those days to have one-sided obligations; after all, inequality then too was one-sided (okay, maybe 99.999 percent). However, the egalitarian instincts of the Women's Charter has gone awry as socially, the status of women have progressed to a point where some obligations placed on husbands by way of the Woman's Charter in certain factual contexts are un-egalitarian instead.

The obligation for a man to maintain his wife starts during marriage.

Section 69(1) provides :

"Any married woman whose husband neglects or refuses to provide her reasonable maintenance may apply to a District Court or a Magistrate's Court and that Court may, on due proof thereof, order the husband to pay a monthly allowance or a lump sum for her maintenance."

Only in the continuation of total existing social inequalities between men and women may such a one-sided obligation make any sense. Take a very likely scenario: a handicapped (or sick) husband with a wife who earns a sufficient income to provide for his needs. It is ludicrous that in such a case, the wife will not be obliged to provide for the husband. While the intention and spirit of Section 69(1) is commendable, as it requires husbands to take care of their wives when they can afford to and when their wives are dependent on them; it becomes equally callous to then not oblige the wives to do the same in a similar situation. The expression in Section 46(1) is clear - "the husband and the wife shall be mutually bound to co-operate with each other in safeguarding the interests of the union."

And now to the one sided maintenance obligations after marriage. Well, contrary to what Andy Ho believes, the social context of marriages are not biased in favor of men. Even if it still remains so (which I really doubt), it is no longer biased in all cases. The specific examples Andy Ho gives in his prime commentary are: "Not only does a woman's sex appeal apparently wanes faster with age than a man's, she generally marries a man of the same age or older. Remarriage therefore becomes increasingly unlikely as she ages. That is not the case with men." Can that be right in each case? So therefore a woman should not be obliged to maintain a husband because her odds of getting remarried are lower? So women are therefore to be compensated for entering into marriage and are not equal actually? Such arguments are spurious at best, and cruel to individuals at worst. It demeans woman, discriminates against men, and inherent is this strange and terrible notion - that although on the day the woman enters into the marriage, she promises to be an equal partner in all things, she may one day walk away from the union, if the man she now calls husband becomes destitute, without a care in the world.

And the law as it stands does not oblige her to do any more.

*Am swamped, no time to read it twice-over, and comments (if any) are appreciated, but might not always be readily replied to. Cheers.