See Chee Hao v Tan Hui Jun (MA-24F-35-07/2026)

By an ex parte originating summons dated 08.07.2026 (Enclosure 1), the Applicant seeks the leave of this Court under section 50(2) of the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976 [Act 164] ("the Act") to present a petition for divorce before the expiration of the period of two years from the date of his marriage to the Respondent. The application is supported by the Affidavit in Support of the Applicant affirmed on 08.07.2026 (Enclosure 2), to which are exhibited the extract of the marriage register, the birth certificate of the child of the marriage, and the correspondence exchanged between the parties' respective solicitors. The Applicant has also filed a Supplementary Affidavit affirmed on 07.07.2026 (Enclosure 4), to which is exhibited a medical report relating to the pregnancy of a person described as his fiancée.

The parties were married on 05.10.2024. The specified period of two years prescribed by section 50(1) of the Act will accordingly expire on 05.10.2026. The application was filed on 08.07.2026, that is to say, within the final three months of the specified period.

Enclosures 1, 2, 3 and 4 were all filed on 08.07.2026. The application was accompanied by a Certificate of Urgency (Enclosure 3), signed by counsel for the Applicant and undated on its face, upon the strength of which an early hearing date was appointed. The relationship between the matters certified in Enclosure 3, the evidence in Enclosure 2, and the further evidence in Enclosure 4 assumes significance in the disposal of the application and is addressed in these grounds.

The application presents an unusual, though not unfamiliar, configuration. This is not a case in which one spouse seeks release from a marriage in the face of resistance or misconduct by the other. On the affidavit evidence, the parties have separated, have negotiated through their respective solicitors, and have reached agreement in principle both on the dissolution of the marriage and on the ancillary matters. What has not occurred is the execution by the Respondent of the documents necessary for a joint petition to be presented.

The real controversy is therefore one of statutory construction and its application to the facts: what an applicant must establish before leave may be allowed under section 50(2) of the Act; and whether the circumstances deposed to in Enclosure 2, namely an amicable breakdown, a settlement reached in principle, and the Respondent's non-execution of the joint petition documents, are capable in law of satisfying that requirement, together with the further question of the weight, if any, to be given to the matters deposed to in Enclosure 4 and certified in Enclosure 3.

The application was heard ex parte on 14.07.2026. I have considered Enclosures 1, 2, 3 and 4 together with the exhibits thereto, and I have heard counsel for the Applicant. These are the grounds of my decision.

The following facts appear from Enclosures 2 and 4 and the documents exhibited thereto. The application being ex parte, they rest entirely on the Applicant's own evidence.

The Applicant and the Respondent were lawfully married on 05.10.2024 at Persatuan Hokkien Klang, in the district of Klang, Selangor, under the provisions of the Act. The extract of the marriage register is exhibited at Tab A of exhibit "SCH".

One child was born of the marriage, a daughter, See Yoon Ru, on 09.11.2024 at Johor Bahru. Her birth certificate is exhibited at Tab B of exhibit "SCH".

The Applicant deposes that, notwithstanding the parties' early efforts to build a harmonious household, differences emerged which proved increasingly difficult to resolve, and that on or about 23.06.2025 the parties decided to live apart. Since that date the Applicant has resided in Selangor and the Respondent in Johor Bahru, and the parties have not resumed cohabitation.

The child has, since 23.06.2025, lived continuously with the Applicant in Selangor. The Applicant deposes that he has assumed full responsibility for her care, maintenance, early education and welfare; that he carries on an online business selling Buddhist religious goods with a monthly income of between RM7,000.00 and RM10,000.00; and that he has the means to continue to maintain the child.

Following the separation, each party appointed solicitors: Tetuan C T Chew & Co. for the Applicant, and Tetuan William, Florence & Partners for the Respondent.

By a letter dated 16.06.2026 (Tab C of exhibit "SCH"), the Respondent's solicitors conveyed, on a without prejudice basis, that the Respondent was agreeable to the dissolution of the marriage pursuant to an application to be filed by the Applicant, upon eight terms: that the proceedings be filed in the High Court at Johor Bahru; that the custody, care and control of the child remain with the Applicant; that the Applicant bear all expenses and costs of the child at all times; that reasonable access to the child be accorded to the Respondent subject to the Applicant's agreement; that neither party claim against the other in respect of any movable or immovable assets; that no maintenance be claimed by either party from the other; that no maintenance for the child be claimed from the Respondent; and that each party bear its own legal costs. The letter recorded the date of separation as 23.06.2025, in correction of an earlier date of 05.06.2025, and proposed, in the alternative, that the parties proceed by way of a joint petition upon the same terms. I note that the letter states that the joint petition is to be filed "after 05.10.2024"; that is plainly a typographical error for 05.10.2026, being the date on which the specified period expires, and I read it accordingly.

By a letter dated 18.06.2026 (Tab D of exhibit "SCH"), the Applicant's solicitors replied that the Applicant accepted all of the proposed terms save the first, and proposed instead that the intended application under section 50(2) of the Act, and the subsequent joint petition if leave were granted, be filed in the High Court of Malaya at Melaka. Following a telephone conversation between the solicitors on the same day, the Respondent's solicitors indicated that the Respondent had no objection to the proceedings being commenced at Melaka.

By a letter dated 19.06.2026 (Tab E of exhibit "SCH"), the Respondent's solicitors confirmed that the Respondent had no objection to the application being filed in the High Court of Malaya at Melaka, and requested that the relevant cause papers be forwarded to them for their review, comments and approval prior to execution and filing.

By a further letter dated 19.06.2026, exhibited in exhibit "SCH" without any tab designation, the Applicant's solicitors forwarded the draft cause papers to the Respondent's solicitors, namely a copy of the Notis Permohonan Ex Parte, a copy of the Applicant's Afidavit Sokongan there described as dated 15.06.2026, and a copy of the draft Afidavit Sokongan intended for the Respondent.

As at 08.07.2026, the date on which Enclosure 2 was affirmed, the Respondent had not executed the Afidavit Sokongan, the joint petition or the other documents required to enable a joint petition to be presented, and the Applicant had received no confirmation as to when those documents would be executed (Enclosure 2, paragraphs 26 and 27).

It was in those circumstances that Enclosure 1 was filed on 08.07.2026, praying that: (i) the Applicant be granted leave under section 50(2) of the Act to present a petition for divorce before the expiration of two years from the date of the marriage between the parties; (ii) the costs of the application be costs in the cause; and (iii) such further or other relief be granted as this Court deems just and appropriate.

Enclosure 3, the Certificate of Urgency, was filed on the same day, signed by counsel for the Applicant, Cik Nur Syifa' Illvera binti Kimal. It certified that the application merited an early hearing date on grounds which may be summarised as follows: that the application is brought under section 50(2) of the Act; that the parties have lived apart since 23.06.2025 and that negotiations through their respective solicitors have produced agreement in principle on the dissolution of the marriage and most ancillary matters; that the Applicant is presently in circumstances requiring an urgent determination of his marital status; that counsel is instructed that the Applicant's intended partner is pregnant with the Applicant's child, with an expected date of delivery of or about 31.08.2026; that if the application were to be heard in the ordinary course of the Court's list, there is a substantial likelihood that the legal position of the Applicant's new family would remain unresolved before the birth of that child, occasioning difficulty and uncertainty in the legal and administrative affairs of the family; and that the application is straightforward, involves no complicated dispute of fact, and can be heard within a short time.

Enclosure 4, the Supplementary Affidavit of the Applicant, was affirmed on 07.07.2026 and filed on 08.07.2026. In it the Applicant deposes: that he affirmed his Affidavit in Support, which he there describes as dated 06.07.2026 (paragraph 2); that the Supplementary Affidavit is made in order to inform the Court of new developments which, in his view, bear upon the application for an earlier hearing date (paragraph 3); that after the preparation of the Affidavit in Support he became engaged and intends to establish a household as soon as the position of his present marriage is resolved according to law (paragraph 4); that his fiancée is now pregnant with his child (paragraph 5); that, upon a Non-Invasive Chromosome Check (NICC $ ^{\circ} $ ) Extended Test Report dated 30.03.2026, the expected date of delivery is on or about 02.09.2026 (paragraph 6); and that the report is exhibited at Tab "A" of exhibit "SCH-2" (paragraph 7).

It is to be noted that, at paragraphs 8 to 11 of Enclosure 4, the Applicant confines the relief which the Supplementary Affidavit is said to support to the fixing of an earlier hearing date. He states that he is aware that his application under section 50(2) will be dealt with in the ordinary course; that his request for an earlier date is not intended to circumvent the Court's processes or to secure any unfair advantage over the Respondent; that an earlier date would occasion the Respondent no prejudice because the application seeks only leave and does not determine any substantive right; and that the Supplementary Affidavit is made in support of the fixing of an earlier hearing date for his application. Enclosure 4 does not, in terms, advance the pregnancy as the exceptional circumstance or hardship relied upon for the purposes of section 50(2).

Four features of the report exhibited at Tab "A" of exhibit "SCH 2" should be recorded. First, the patient is named in the report as Feng Pan; the fiancée is nowhere named in Enclosure 4, and the report neither names nor otherwise identifies the father of the expected child. Secondly, the expected date of delivery stated in the report is 02.09.2026, and not 31.08.2026 as certified in Enclosure 3. Thirdly, the report records a gestational age of 15 weeks and 5 days as at the date of collection of the sample, 16.03.2026, from which it follows that conception occurred during the subsistence of the marriage, the parties having by then been living apart. Fourthly, the certificate of exhibit identification filed with Enclosure 4 identifies the exhibit as "SCH", whereas paragraph 7 of Enclosure 4 refers to exhibit "SCH-2". C. ISSUES FOR DETERMINATION

Three issues arise for determination, together with a fourth arising from Enclosures 3 and 4:

on the proper construction of section 50(2) of the Act, what constitutes the ground upon which leave may be allowed, and what is the function of the two matters to which the judge is directed to have regard;

whether the circumstances deposed to in Enclosures 2 and 4 are capable in law of amounting to, and on the evidence do amount to, exceptional circumstances or hardship suffered by the Applicant;

whether, in any event, the discretion of the Court ought to be exercised in favour of granting leave, having regard in particular to the interests of the child of the marriage, the question of reconciliation, and the imminent expiry of the specified period; and

what weight attaches to the pregnancy of the Applicant's fiancée, deposed to in Enclosure 4 and certified in different terms in Enclosure 3, and whether it is capable of founding the leave sought. D. GOVERNING LAW AND FRAMEWORK [24] Section 50 of the Act provides: "(1) Subject to subsection (2), no petition for divorce shall be presented to the court before the expiration of the period of two years from the date of the marriage (hereafter in this section referred to as "the specified period").

A Judge of the court may, on an application made to him, allow the presentation of a petition for divorce within the specified period on the ground that the case is one of exceptional circumstances or hardship suffered by the petitioner; but in determining the application the Judge shall have regard to the interests of any child of the marriage and to the question whether there is a reasonable probability of a reconciliation between the parties during the specified period.

Nothing in this section shall be deemed to prohibit the presentation of a petition based upon matters which occurred before the expiration of the specified period." [25] The structure of the provision yields three propositions. First, subsection (1) enacts a general prohibition: no petition for divorce may be presented within the first two years of the marriage. Secondly, that prohibition is expressed to be subject to subsection (2), which alone permits the Court to relax it. Thirdly, subsection (2) identifies the ground upon which leave may be allowed, namely "that the case is one of exceptional circumstances or hardship suffered by the petitioner", and then directs that, in determining the application, the Judge shall have regard to two matters: the interests of any child of the marriage, and whether there is a reasonable probability of a reconciliation between the parties during the specified period. [26] The grammar of subsection (2) is important. The ground for leave is exceptional circumstances or hardship suffered by the petitioner. The two matters introduced by the words "but in determining the application the Judge shall have regard to" are mandatory considerations which the Court must weigh in deciding whether to allow an application founded upon that ground. They condition the exercise of the discretion; they do not themselves constitute the ground. An applicant who demonstrates only that the interests of a child would not be prejudiced and that reconciliation is improbable has established the absence of countervailing factors. He has not established the statutory ground upon which alone leave may be allowed. The Adjective "Exceptional" Qualifies Both Limbs of the Ground [27] A short but important question of construction arises: does the adjective "exceptional" qualify "circumstances" alone, or does it extend also to "hardship suffered by the petitioner"? In my judgment it extends to both limbs, for four reasons. [28] First, as a matter of ordinary grammar, where a single qualifying adjective stands at the head of a compound expression comprising two nouns joined disjunctively, the natural and presumptive reading is distributive: the adjective travels to each noun unless the context repels it. Nothing in section 50(2) repels it. The phrase "exceptional circumstances or hardship suffered by the petitioner" reads naturally as "exceptional circumstances, or exceptional hardship suffered by the petitioner"; the trailing words "suffered by the petitioner" attach to "hardship" without displacing the qualifier at the head of the phrase. [29] Secondly, the maxim noscitur a sociis applies: a word takes colour from its companions. "Hardship" is a word of open texture. Placed immediately beside "exceptional circumstances", within a single composite ground and within an exception to a statutory prohibition, it must be read at a comparable level of gravity. Parliament cannot sensibly be taken to have set a demanding standard in the first limb and a trivial one in the second, within one and the same phrase. [30] Thirdly, the contrary reading produces incoherence and defeats the enactment. If "hardship" were unqualified, bare hardship of any degree would suffice. But some measure of hardship emotional, practical or financial attends virtually every broken marriage awaiting the expiry of the specified period. On the unqualified reading, the second limb would be satisfied in nearly every case, it would engulf the first limb, and the prohibition in section 50(1) would be denuded of practical effect. A construction which stultifies the enacting provision is to be rejected in favour of one which preserves it. [31] Fourthly, the purposive consideration points the same way. Section 50(2) is an exception to a prohibition enacted in the public interest in the stability of marriage, and an exception of that character is to be kept within the bounds which the legislative policy allows. It follows that the threshold under both limbs is one of gravity out of the ordinary: exceptional circumstances, or hardship of an exceptional character suffered by the petitioner. For convenience I shall refer to the composite ground as "exceptional circumstances or exceptional hardship". [32] The decided cases apply the provision in the same sense. In Kiranjit Kaur Kalwant Singh v. Chandok Narinderpal Singh [2010] 3 CLJ 724, the High Court granted leave where the husband had published slanderous statements concerning the wife on an internet blog, holding that the expression "exceptional circumstances" is not confined to physical or mental abuse or cruelty. In arriving at that conclusion the Court, adopting the approach of the House of Lords in Fay v. Fay [1982] 2 All ER 922, proceeded upon the footing that the judge decides by making his own value judgment whether the hardship is out of the ordinary, judged by prevailing standards of acceptable behaviour between spouses and after taking account of all relevant circumstances; and that the hardship which counts is not limited to past hardship, but includes present and future hardship. The Court in that case also considered Brewer v. Brewer [1964] 1 All ER 539, where leave was refused in the absence of continuing or present exceptional hardship; Bowman v. Bowman [1949] 2 All ER 127, in which Denning LJ observed that it is the accumulation and gravity of matrimonial wrongs, and not the mere fact of breakdown, which lifts a case out of the ordinary run; and W v. W [1966] 2 All ER 889, to the effect that the affidavit allegations are to be examined critically, the court not being bound to accept them. What May Amount to Exceptional Circumstances or Exceptional Hardship [33] What, then, may amount to exceptional circumstances or exceptional hardship? The statute wisely refrains from definition, and it would be wrong for the Court to lay down a rigid catalogue: the assessment is intensely fact-specific, and the categories are never closed. Some guidance may nonetheless assist. The following illustrations are offered as guidance only, without any pretension to exhaustiveness, to indicate the order of gravity which the statutory language contemplates. Depending always upon the evidence in the particular case, circumstances of the following kinds are capable of crossing the threshold:

grave violence, cruelty or abuse by the respondent endangering the life, safety or health of the petitioner or of a child of the marriage, such that the continued subsistence of the marital bond exposes the petitioner or the child to real and continuing risk;

(ii) the discovery that the marriage was procured by fraud, deception or the concealment of a fundamental matter for example, a subsisting prior marriage of the respondent, or the deliberate concealment of a serious communicable disease;

(iii) the conviction of the respondent for a serious criminal offence, particularly an offence committed against the petitioner or a child, attended by a substantial term of imprisonment;

(iv) the pregnancy of the petitioner, or of the person whom the petitioner intends to marry, where the status of the expected child and the ability of the petitioner to remarry before the birth are in truth capable of being affected by the order sought; but, as appears below, an illustration of that kind will avail an applicant only where the relief claimed is capable, in point of time and in point of law, of altering the position before the birth;

the deliberate dissipation of matrimonial assets, or the incurring of substantial liabilities in the petitioner's name, of such a character that the urgent severance of the matrimonial financial nexus is necessary to prevent serious and irreparable financial harm;

(vi) a sustained campaign by the respondent of threats, harassment, vilification or defamation of the petitioner, including by publication on the internet or on social media, of a continuing character and gravely injurious to the petitioner's reputation, health or livelihood: in Kiranjit Kaur slanderous internet postings of a continuing character were held to constitute exceptional circumstances, the provision not being confined to physical or mental cruelty;

(vii) desertion by a respondent who has disappeared or placed himself or herself beyond reach, leaving the petitioner or a child of the marriage in destitution or grave insecurity. This illustration is not made out by assertion. The applicant must depose, with particulars, to the enquiries undertaken to trace the respondent and their results, and to the fact that the absence was neither procured nor acquiesced in by him; and the destitution or insecurity must be proved, not merely alleged. Where the whereabouts are said to be unknown, the Court will ordinarily require substituted service before determining the application; and

(viii) conduct of the respondent of an exceptionally grave, degrading or humiliating character, going well beyond the ordinary incidents of marital breakdown. [34] Three cautions must accompany that list. First, the presence of a feature of the kind described does not compel the grant of leave: the mandatory considerations prescribed by section 50(2] — the interests of any child of the marriage and the probability of reconciliation — must still be weighed, and the discretion remains that of the Court. Secondly, and conversely, the absence of any listed feature does not of itself foreclose leave: the touchstone is and remains the statutory language, applied to the whole of the circumstances proved on affidavit. Thirdly, where the ground asserted is one which, by its nature, the respondent is absent to contradict illustration (vii) being the obvious instance that absence confers no evidential advantage. Such allegations are to be examined with the critical eye enjoined by Wv.W, and acted upon only if verified on oath and supported, so far as the case admits, by independent evidence. What is common to every case falling within the provision is gravity of an order which takes the case out of the general run of early marital breakdown. [35] That construction is confirmed by the purpose of section 50. The two-year restriction embodies a deliberate legislative policy of restraint against precipitate recourse to divorce in the earliest period of a marriage. Parliament has determined that, save in exceptional cases, parties to a young marriage should not be permitted to invoke the divorce jurisdiction until the marriage has been given two years in which to establish itself. In Kiranjit Kaur, drawing upon the Report of the Royal Commission on Non-Muslim Marriage and Divorce, the High Court observed that the purpose of the rule is to curb impetuous and hasty resort by spouses to divorce. The specified period is a protective buffer erected in the public interest in the stability of the institution of marriage; it is not a procedural formality to be dispensed with whenever both spouses are content that it should be. [36] The construction is further confirmed by the scheme of the Act. Section 52 provides a consensual route to dissolution: if husband and wife mutually agree that their marriage should be dissolved they may, after the expiration of two years from the date of their marriage, present a joint petition, and the court may, if it thinks fit, make a decree of divorce on being satisfied that both parties freely consent and that proper provision is made for the wife and for the support, care and custody of the children, if any, of the marriage. The statutory design is therefore coherent: consenting spouses whose marriage has broken down are directed to the joint petition procedure upon the expiry of the specified period, while section 50(2) reserves to the Court a power to intervene earlier in the exceptional case. To read section 50(2) as extending to every consensual breakdown would collapse that design. [37] Nor is that design at the disposition of the parties. Section 97 of the Act empowers the Court at any time to vary the terms of any agreement relating to the custody or maintenance of a child, notwithstanding any provision to the contrary in such agreement, where it is satisfied that it is reasonable and for the welfare of the child so to do. It follows that the terms which the parties have here agreed in respect of the child are not, and cannot be, conclusive; they remain subject to the supervisory jurisdiction of the Court seised of any petition presented in due course. E. ANALYSIS AND DETERMINATION Issue (a): The Threshold Under Section 50(2) [38] The application, as it is framed in Enclosure 2, treats the statutory inquiry as consisting of the two matters to which the Judge is directed to have regard, namely the interests of the child of the marriage and the probability of reconciliation, and proceeds upon the footing that, since both considerations are satisfied, leave ought to follow. That approach cannot be accepted. It inverts the statutory scheme by elevating the mandatory considerations into the operative test, while passing over in silence the ground which the statute itself prescribes. Nowhere in Enclosure 2 is it identified what the exceptional circumstances of this case are said to be, or what hardship the Applicant is said to suffer. [39] The consequences of the construction implicit in that approach expose its error. In every genuine marital breakdown there will, by definition, be little probability of reconciliation; and in a great many such cases the arrangements for any child will be settled or uncontroversial. If those two features sufficed, leave under section 50(2) would be available in substantially every case of early breakdown, and section 50(1) would be reduced to a dead letter precisely for the class of consenting parties whom Parliament directed to the joint petition procedure under section 52 upon the expiry of the specified period. Parliament cannot have intended the exception to swallow the rule. The threshold question in every application under section 50(2) is, and remains, whether the case is one of exceptional circumstances or of exceptional hardship suffered by the applicant. Issue (b): Whether Exceptional Circumstances or Hardship Are Shown [40] Taken at its highest, Enclosure 2 discloses the following state of affairs: a marriage which broke down within its first year; a separation subsisting since 23.06.2025; a negotiated resolution, conducted responsibly through solicitors, of the dissolution and of all ancillary matters; the Respondent's agreement in principle to those terms; and the Respondent's non-execution, as at 08.07.2026, of the documents required for a joint petition. Enclosure 4 adds the Applicant's engagement and the pregnancy of his fiancée, which I consider separately under issue (d). [41] None of the matters deposed to in Enclosure 2, whether taken singly or cumulatively, is capable of amounting to exceptional circumstances. The irretrievable breakdown of a young marriage is not an exceptional circumstance; it is the ordinary premise of every application under section 50(2), and indeed the very situation to which the prohibition in section 50(1) is directed. A breakdown which is amicable, and which the parties have managed with the assistance of solicitors, is if anything further removed from the exceptional than a breakdown attended by conflict. There is nothing in that evidence which distinguishes this case from the general run of early marital failures, save that it has been handled with commendable civility. [42] Nor does Enclosure 2 disclose hardship suffered by the Applicant. There is no allegation of violence, cruelty or misconduct. There is no suggestion of destitution, of financial detriment flowing from the subsistence of the married status, or of any pressing legal or personal necessity requiring that the marital tie be severed before 05.10.2026. The child's position is settled and stable in the Applicant's care. What the affidavit discloses is not hardship but a wish, entirely understandable, to formalise sooner rather than later a dissolution upon which the parties are substantially agreed. A wish for expedition is not hardship. [43] The single grievance articulated in Enclosure 2, at paragraphs 28 and 34, is that the Applicant ought not to be left in a state of uncertainty for an indefinite period while the marriage has in substance failed. The characterisation cannot be accepted, for the uncertainty is neither indefinite nor oppressive. The specified period expires on 05.10.2026, less than three months after the hearing of this application. Upon its expiry, the parties may present a joint petition upon the terms already agreed, a course which the Respondent's solicitors themselves proposed in the alternative in their letter of 16.06.2026; or, should the Respondent's cooperation not be forthcoming, the Applicant may present his own petition. In the interval, the arrangements for the child, for maintenance and for property stand agreed in principle and are operating in fact. A postponement measured in weeks, during which the Applicant suffers no identified detriment, is not hardship within the meaning of section 50(2); still less is it exceptional. [44] The true occasion for the application appears with candour from Enclosure 2: the joint petition has not been filed only because the Respondent has yet to execute the relevant documents. Two answers dispose of the point. First, the Respondent's entitlement to review the cause papers, to take advice, and to make her own deliberations before signing an entitlement which the Applicant himself properly acknowledges at paragraphs 27 and 33 of Enclosure 2, and which the Respondent's solicitors expressly reserved in their letter of 19.06.2026 is the exercise of a legal right. The exercise by one spouse of a right to deliberate over a voluntary act cannot, without more, constitute hardship to the other. Secondly, the consent which underpins a joint petition under section 52 must be free and must subsist at presentation. Leave under section 50(2) is not a device by which a spouse who is readier than the other may outflank that requirement, converting a stalled consensual process into unilateral proceedings ahead of time. If the Respondent's willingness should evaporate, the Applicant's remedy is a petition presented after the expiry of the specified period; it is not premature leave. [45] Nor does the parties' agreement in principle, however responsibly negotiated, supply the statutory ground or reduce the gate-keeping function of section 50 to a formality. As I have observed, the terms agreed in respect of the child, including the term that no maintenance for the child be claimed from the Respondent, remain subject to the scrutiny of the Court seised of any petition presented in due course, by reason of section 97 of the Act. The agreement in principle therefore carries less finality than the application assumes, and the grant of leave would have lent it none. [46] The chronology reinforces the conclusion. The parties separated on 23.06.2025, yet the settlement correspondence was exchanged only in June 2026, and the application was filed on 08.07.2026 with less than thirteen weeks of the specified period remaining. The proximity of the expiry both diminishes any conceivable hardship and lays bare the true character of the application: it seeks acceleration for convenience, not relief from exceptional circumstances or hardship. That is not the purpose for which the discretion under section 50(2) exists. [47] I find, accordingly, that on the evidence in Enclosure 2 the case is not one of exceptional circumstances, and that no hardship suffered by the Applicant, let alone exceptional hardship, has been shown. Whether Enclosure 4 alters that conclusion is considered under issue (d). Subject to that, the statutory threshold is not crossed. Issue (c): The Mandatory Considerations and the Exercise of Discretion [48] The first mandatory consideration is the interests of the child of the marriage. The child has lived with the Applicant since 23.06.2025; the Respondent is to have reasonable access; the Applicant bears her expenses; and there is no dispute between the parties concerning her welfare. Those arrangements are already operating and are agreed in principle. Nothing in the evidence suggests that the child's interests require, or would in any respect be advanced by, the presentation of a petition before 05.10.2026: the stability which the arrangements provide does not depend upon an early decree. The consideration is protective in character. It exists to ensure that a premature divorce does not injure a child; it is not a makeweight capable of supplying the ground which the statute requires. On the evidence, it is at best neutral. [49] The second mandatory consideration is whether there is a reasonable probability of a reconciliation between the parties during the specified period. On the affidavit evidence and the solicitors' correspondence, I accept that there is none. But a negative answer to that question merely removes an obstacle to leave; it does not create an entitlement to it. Were it otherwise, leave would follow automatically in every case of genuine breakdown, which is the construction I have already rejected. Finally, it is said that no prejudice would be occasioned to the Respondent by the grant of leave, since the application seeks only leave to present a petition and the Respondent would retain every procedural and substantive right to respond to it. The absence of prejudice to the other spouse is not the statutory test, and it cannot assist. A permissive approach conditioned only upon the absence of prejudice would license leave in every consensual case, with the consequences for the statutory scheme already described. In any event, the submission proves too much: precisely because leave would confer so modest a practical advantage, with the specified period expiring on 05.10.2026 and the joint petition procedure under section 52 then immediately available upon the parties' own agreed terms, the grant of leave would achieve nothing that the passage of a short period will not achieve, at the cost of eroding the policy of section 50(1). Even had the threshold been arguably crossed, I would for that reason have declined to exercise the discretion in the Applicant's favour. Issue (d): The Pregnancy of the Applicant's Fiancée (Enclosure 4) and the Certificate of Urgency (Enclosure 3) [51] I turn to the matter which, on any view, is the only feature of this case capable of lending it any colour of the exceptional: the pregnancy of the Applicant's fiancée. It is properly to be observed at the outset that this matter is not confined to the Certificate of Urgency. It is deposed to on oath, in Enclosure 4, and is supported by a medical report exhibited to that affidavit. To that extent the evidence is before the Court, and I have considered it. [52] Three matters must nevertheless be noticed about the manner in which it is placed before the Court:

The Applicant does not, in Enclosure 4, advance the pregnancy as the exceptional circumstance or hardship relied upon under section 50(2). As set out at paragraph [21] above, he expressly confines the purpose of that affidavit to the fixing of an earlier hearing date, and states in terms that his application under section 50(2) will otherwise be dealt with in the ordinary course. The Court decides applications upon the case which the applicant chooses to advance.

The evidence, such as it is, is thin. The fiancée is not named. The report names a patient, Feng Pan, whose connection to the Applicant is not established by any evidence beyond his bare assertion, and the report neither names nor identifies the father of the expected child. Approaching the affidavit critically, as W v. W enjoins, I am not satisfied that the pregnancy of a child of the Applicant has been proved to the standard which an ex parte applicant, seeking to displace a statutory prohibition, must meet.

There is a discrepancy on the face of the papers. Enclosure 3 certifies an expected date of delivery of or about 31.08.2026. Enclosure 4 and the report exhibited to it give 02.09.2026. The Certificate of Urgency, upon the strength of which an early hearing date was appointed, thus certified a date which the Applicant's own sworn evidence and his own exhibit do not support. [53] A certificate of urgency is, in any event, an instrument of case management. Its office is to move the Court to appoint an early hearing date. It is signed by counsel; it is not sworn; and it is not evidence. In proceedings commenced by originating summons, the facts upon which the Court is invited to exercise its substantive jurisdiction must be proved by affidavit; they cannot be supplied by counsel's certificate, any more than by statements from the Bar. The distinction matters acutely on an ex parte application, where the Court acts on the applicant's evidence alone and is entitled to insist that every material fact be verified on oath. Nothing in Enclosure 3 can therefore be acted upon as evidence, and I disregard it as such; I have looked instead to Enclosure 4. [54] I would decide this issue against the Applicant on the evidential grounds already given. But there is a further and, to my mind, decisive answer, which would apply even if the pregnancy had been fully and properly proved. It is that the leave sought is incapable of achieving the object which the pregnancy is said to make urgent. [55] Leave under section 50(2) is no more than permission to present a petition. The presentation of a petition is the beginning of a process, not its end. The petition must be presented, served and heard. By section 61(1) of the Act, every decree of divorce shall in the first instance be a decree nisi and shall not be made absolute before the expiration of three months from its grant, unless the court by general or special order fixes a shorter period. By section 62, either party may marry again only where the decree has been made absolute and the position as to appeal has been resolved. And by sections 5 and 6 of the Act, a person lawfully married is incapable, during the continuance of that marriage, of contracting a valid marriage with any other person, any such purported marriage being void. [56] The consequence is plain. The expected date of delivery is 02.09.2026, some seven weeks after the hearing of this application, and it precedes even the expiry of the specified period on 05.10.2026. There was no realistic prospect, upon any view of the matter, of a petition being presented, heard and determined, of a decree nisi being pronounced and made absolute, and of a remarriage being solemnised, before the birth of the expected child. Leave, if granted, would not have altered the status of that child by one day. The urgency asserted was therefore incapable of being met by the order prayed; and a circumstance which the order sought cannot relieve is not a circumstance upon which the order sought can be founded. [57] I add one further observation, and I make it without censure and confining myself strictly to what the evidence discloses. The report exhibited to Enclosure 4 records a gestational age of 15 weeks and 5 days as at 16.03.2026. Conception therefore occurred while the Applicant was, and remains, lawfully married to the Respondent. A statutory restraint enacted in the public interest in the stability of marriage is not to be relaxed on the strength of a difficulty which has arisen from the applicant's own conduct during the very period which the restraint was designed to protect. That is not to say that such a matter can never be relevant; illustration (iv) at paragraph [33] above is not withdrawn. It is to say that where, as here, the order sought can do nothing to relieve the difficulty, the difficulty cannot supply the ground. [58] Whether the expected birth, properly proved and particularised, and advanced squarely as the ground, could found a fresh application under section 50(2) is not before me, and nothing in these grounds forecloses it. F. OBSERVATIONS ON THE AFFIDAVITS [59] An ex parte application attracts the duty of full and frank disclosure, which is a duty to place all material facts before the Court on affidavit — fully, candidly and on oath. It is right to record that Enclosure 2 is candid in what it does contain: indeed, it is the very candour of that affidavit, in disclosing the consensual and settled character of the parties' dealings, which demonstrates the absence of the statutory ground. I am nonetheless constrained to record a number of defects in the papers, none of which is decisive, but all of which ought to have been avoided:

paragraphs 24 and 25 of Enclosure 2 are identical; paragraph 32 is incomplete, ending mid-sentence; and paragraphs 27 and 33, and paragraphs 28 and 34, substantially duplicate one another;

Enclosure 4 was affirmed on 07.07.2026, that is to say, on the day before Enclosure 2, the affidavit which it purports to supplement, was affirmed; and it describes that affidavit as dated 06.07.2026, whereas the jurat bears the date 08.07.2026, and the Applicant's solicitors' letter of 19.06.2026 described the Afidavit Sokongan then forwarded to the Respondent's solicitors as dated 15.06.2026;

the certificate of exhibit identification filed with Enclosure 4 identifies the exhibit as "SCH", whereas paragraph 7 of Enclosure 4 refers to exhibit "SCH-2"; and

Enclosure 3 certifies an expected date of delivery of or about 31.08.2026, which is not supported by the Applicant's own sworn evidence or by the report exhibited to Enclosure 4, both of which give 02.09.2026. A certificate of urgency moves the Court to depart from its ordinary list. It should be given only upon grounds which the certifying counsel is in a position to support, and its contents should correspond with the evidence. [60] Affidavits placed before the Court, and particularly affidavits upon which the Court is asked to act ex parte, ought to be prepared with greater care. G. CONCLUSION [61] The issues are answered as follows. On its proper construction, section 50(2) of the Act permits leave only upon the ground that the case is one of exceptional circumstances or of exceptional hardship suffered by the applicant, the adjective "exceptional" qualifying both limbs; the interests of any child of the marriage and the probability of reconciliation are mandatory considerations in the exercise of the discretion, not substitutes for that ground. The circumstances deposed to in Enclosure 2 an amicable breakdown, a settlement agreed in principle, the Respondent's deliberation over the execution of the joint petition documents, and a residual wait of less than three months are neither exceptional nor productive of hardship. The mandatory considerations, while not adverse to the Applicant, are incapable of founding the leave sought, and the discretion would in any event have been exercised against its grant. The pregnancy deposed to in Enclosure 4 is not proved to the standard required of an ex parte applicant; it is not advanced as the ground for leave; and, in any event, the order sought is incapable of altering the position before the expected birth. The matters certified in Enclosure 3 are not evidence and cannot be acted upon as such. [62] The refusal of leave leaves the Applicant with no practical grievance. Upon the expiry of the specified period on 05.10.2026, the parties may present a joint petition under section 52 of the Act upon the terms they have already agreed, or the Applicant may present a petition for divorce in the ordinary way. All of his rights are preserved; only their exercise is deferred, and deferred for precisely the interval which Parliament has prescribed. The refusal of leave defers the remedy; it does not deny it. H. ORDERS OF THE COURT [63] For the reasons given, I make the following orders:

the application in Enclosure 1 is dismissed;

(ii) there shall be no order as to costs; and

(iii) for the avoidance of doubt, the dismissal is without prejudice to (a) the presentation of a fresh application under section 50(2) of the Act, supported by affidavit evidence of any matters relied upon, should the Applicant be so advised; (b) the right of the parties to present a joint petition under section 52 of the Act; and (c) the right of the Applicant to present a petition for divorce, upon the expiry of the specified period. Dated 14 July 2026 (YA Dato' Sri Raja Segaran A/L S. Krishnan) (Judicial Commisioner) High Court Of Malaya Malacca High Court (MELAKA) Lawyer For Applicant : Puan Nur Syifa' illvera binti Kimal Tetuan C T Chew & Co. Peguambela dan Peguamcara No. 43-G, Jalan Ong Kim Wee, 75300 Melaka.