The case of Kanagasingam a/l Kandiah v Shireen a/p Chelliah Thiruchelvam & Anor [2026] 7 MLJ 494 principally involved a concealment of a second marriage by a spouse to enable her to enforce maintenance orders against her former spouse after their divorce. The High Court in this case addressed, amongst other issues, allegations of fraud and collusion in spousal maintenance in the context of section 82 of the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976  (“LRMDA 1976”). Section 82 imposes an absolute statutory bar on a former spouse’s entitlement to maintenance upon that spouse’s remarriage or upon proof that the spouse is living in adultery.
 
Facts
 
The Plaintiff Husband (“Plaintiff”) and the 1^st Defendant Wife (“1^st Defendant”) were married in 1994 and had four children. After their marriage broke down in 2008, the 1^st Defendant left the matrimonial home and successfully applied for custody and interim maintenance against the Plaintiff. Divorce proceedings followed, culminating in a decree nisi in October 2011, and the granting of spousal and child maintenance in favour of the 1^st Defendant. The Plaintiff’s appeal was dismissed in 2014. Unbeknown to the Plaintiff, the 1^st Defendant had married the 2^nd Defendant in Sri Lanka in April 2012 without registering the marriage in Malaysia. Between 2012 and 2019, despite her remarriage to the 2^nd Defendant, the 1^st Defendant repeatedly initiated contempt and committal proceedings to enforce her spousal maintenance order resulting in multiple consent orders and the Plaintiff’s imprisonment for 51 days in 2019. The Plaintiff only discovered the foreign marriage in October 2019. He filed the present suit in 2020, alleging fraud, concealment and collusion, and seeking restitution and damages against the 1^st Defendant and 2^nd Defendant.
 
Decision of the High Court
 
The Court addressed four issues arising from the purported conduct of the 1^st and 2^nd Defendants over time:  

Issue 1: Whether the 1st Defendant fraudulently concealed her adulterous relationship during divorce proceedings
 
The High Court found that the Plaintiff had failed to establish any fraudulent concealment by the 1^st and 2^nd Defendants for the alleged adulterous relationship, there being no evidence that adultery had occurred. The evidence of adultery was either previously considered or could have been discoverable with reasonable diligence at the time of the divorce proceedings which ended in October 2011, more than 14 years before the current re-litigation. As such, the matter was res judicata and re-opening it would undermine the principle of finality of litigation. This principle ensures that disputes, once fairly and conclusively determined, are not endlessly re-opened. In any event, the law does not permit a party to reopen concluded proceedings in order to remedy evidential gaps or forensic choices.
 
Issue 2: Whether the 1^st Defendant was “living in adultery” with the 2^nd Defendant between October 2011 and April 2012
 
After reviewing the evidence submitted by the Plaintiff (including a change of address by the 1^st Defendant), the Court found no cogent proof that the 1^st and 2^nd Defendants had cohabited between October 2011 and April 2012. The Court held that a single act of adultery was insufficient to establish that a person was “living in adultery” and that continuity of conduct must be shown. The Court rejected the Plaintiff’s argument that a mere change of address proved cohabitation or “living in adultery”. It held that it would not infer sexual relations based on such circumstantial evidence, emphasising that such an inference would be unfair.
 
The Court held that the statutory purpose of section 82 of the LRMDA 1976 is to prevent a former spouse from benefiting financially from two households simultaneously, commonly referred to as “double dipping” and to ensure that maintenance obligations arising from a dissolved marriage cease once a new domestic partnership is established. However, the statutory elements for section 82 of the LRMDA 1976 were not fulfilled in respect of Issue 2.
 
Issue 3: Whether the 1^st Defendant had fraudulently concealed her marriage to the 2^nd Defendant.
 
The Court found compelling evidence of deliberate fraud, including the evidence that the 1^st Defendant failed to register or disclose her foreign marriage to the 2nd Defendant to the Plaintiff throughout the committal proceedings between 2012 and 2019 despite her statutory duty to register it under section 31 of the LRMDA 1976.
 
Issue 4: Whether there was collusion between the 1^st and 2^nd Defendants.
 
The Court held that there was fraudulent collusion between the 1^st and 2^nd Defendants based on their conduct during the proceedings. The 1^st and 2^nd Defendants had colluded to mislead the Court for financial gain as evidenced by the 2^nd Defendant’s deliberate absence from the divorce proceedings, the reinstated judgment in default against him and the 1^st Defendant’s untenable claim of ignorance of the 2^nd Defendant’s whereabouts despite their marital relationship.
 
This collusive conduct was linked to the fraudulent concealment of marriage by which the 1^st Defendant continued to procure and enforce consent orders that were secured by fraud. The Court emphasised that under Section 82 of the LRMDA 1976, the 1^st Defendant’s deliberate concealment of her re-marriage, being a fraudulent misrepresentation, extinguished her entitlement to spousal maintenance. Applying the maxim fraus omnia corrumpit  (“fraud unravels everything” or “fraud corrupts all”), her fraudulent misrepresentation corrupted the entire transaction. As the consent orders were obtained through fraudulent misrepresentation, they were rendered voidable and could not stand. The consent orders and resulting committal order were set aside in their entirety.
 
Comments
 
The High Court’s decision illustrates its approach in balancing the principle of finality in matrimonial proceedings – see its decision on Issues 1 and 2 – with its duty to intervene where court processes have been abused by fraud – see its decision on Issues 3 and 4.
 
The decision also illustrates the magnitude of the penalty by way of damages that the High Court was willing to award upon a finding of fraud, including fraudulent misrepresentation and collusion. In this case, aside from ordering the reimbursement of spousal maintenance paid by the Plaintiff to the 1^st Defendant amounting to RM310,000, it awarded to the Plaintiff a hefty RM400,000 as aggravated damages (given the distress and prejudice occasioned to the Plaintiff resulting from the committal order) and RM300,000 as exemplary damages (given the 1^st Defendant and 2^nd Defendant’s conduct which the Court found to be “egregious and utterly reprehensible”).
 
 
Case Note by Trevor Jason Mark Padasian (Partner) and Isabelle Chip Oi-Yi (Associate) of the Family Law Practice of Skrine.