At midnight, Cinderella's ball gown turned into rags.

Similarly, a study mama from China saw her life left in tatters after she married the man she thought of as a model boyfriend.

Instead, she received the shock of her life as soon as they were married. Her caring boyfriend turned into an abusive husband.

The distraught woman, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed to Lianhe Wanbao how her Singaporean husband became a totally different person immediately after they registered their marriage.

The distressed woman said that he was an affectionate and attentive boyfriend, but started asking her for money almost everyday after their marriage. When she refused, he resorted to physical abuse - kicking and punching her until she gave in. In two months, she gave him $75,000.

When his wife could not meet his demands for more money, he tried to force her to sell her condominium in China.

"We met in Chinatown, and he proposed to me very soon after we got to know each other. I agreed to marry him because thought I was very lucky to find such a caring man," she told Wanbao.

But she claimed that the day after their wedding, he asked her for $30,000 to buy a re-sale flat, then $45,000 to renovate the apartment.

Six days after moving into the new house, he started hitting her and her teenage daughter when she refused to give him more money.

'Hell money' in the mail

He moved out soon after unsuccessful attempts to extort money from her, but she continued to live in fear.

Recently, she opened her mail box to find a large stack of 'hell money', which had insults and curses written on them, directed at her and her daughter. The handwriting looked suspiciously like her husband's. People usually take these paper notes as an offering to the dead.

In another hair-raising incident, she came home to find that both her and her daughter's shoes, plus a nightgown, had been cut with a pair of scissors.

She has also been receiving telephone calls threatening and harassing her.

Twice bitten

She told Wanbao that her first marriage in China also ended in tears.

They divorced after she found out that her first husband was having an affair.

After selling her business in China, she came to Singapore with her daughter.

Crying, she said, "I have lost all my money, and I don't know what to do next. I suppose I can only take things one step at a time."