HE'S not irresponsible. He's just broke.

The divorce, who wants to be known only as Mr Tsai (above), has not met his maintenance payments to his ex-wife and two children for the last five months.

If he does not pay $300 - the amount decided by the family court - by 28 Sep, the 51-year-old part-time security guard faces a one-week jail term.

Under the Women's Charter, a person who fails to make maintenance payments can be jailed up to a month for each month of unpaid maintenance.

But Mr Tsai claims he cannot afford the payments. He earns $500 a month, lives in a one-room rental flat and has to support another son from a previous marriage.

His wife, on the other hand, earns $2,500 a month as a sales executive.

Mr Tsai married his second wife in 1998 after his first wife died six years earlier.

The couple, who have a 16-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son, divorced in 2005.

In January, his ex-wife filed a complaint against him for defaulting on maintenance payments.

He said he stopped paying after she did not allow him to see their children and applied for a personal protection order against him.

He said he used to work as a full-time security guard and earned about $800 a month. But he lost his job after suffering a heart attack in January and could only get a lesser-paying job.

Most of his monthly pay goes to daily expenses, Mr Tsai said. He also gives about $150 in allowance to his 22-year-old son, an undergraduate at the Nanyang Technological University.

Father and son live in a one-room flat in Tiong Bahru.

Mr Tsai told The New Paper at his flat yesterday: 'Sometimes, if he needs more money to buy textbooks, I would borrow money from my mother and elder sister.'

Mr Tsai's flat is sparsely furnished. He has no TV. Father and son share a mattress and pillow. Meals - just two a day - consist mostly of canned food and instant noodles.

CPF account

Mr Tsai showed us his most recent CPF statement, which stated that he had less than $2,500 in his Ordinary Account and $188 in his Medisave account.

'So how do you think I can afford to pay another $150 every month in maintenance?' he said.

He added that he could not even afford to go for follow-up screenings after his heart attack.

Mr Tsai insists he is not being irresponsible.

'I care for my other children. If I can support them, I would. But I can't even provide for myself and my son,' he said.

He said he would just go to jail if he can't come up with the $300 in two weeks.

'At least I won't have to worry about finding a way to pay the $300,' he said.

But family lawyer Koh Tien Hua from Harry Elias Partnership advised against such behaviour.

'Going to jail is a form of escapism and it does not cancel out the amount he has to pay,' he said. 'The amount will simply snowball.'

Mr Koh suggested that ex-husbands like Mr Tsai should undergo retraining so they can try to get an extra job.

Lawyer Kelvin Lee from Samuel Seow Law Corporation noted that the main problem in such cases is that 'in Singapore, only men are required to maintain their wives and children'.

In the US, he added, men can also claim maintenance from their ex-wives if the latter have higher earning power.

'The US looks at support for spouses, whereas we look at support for wives and children,' Mr Lee said.

Both lawyers said the best recourse for Mr Tsai would be to apply to the courts for his maintenance payment to be cut.

Mr Koh said: 'If he just says he has no money, the court will not accept it as a valid reason.'

This article was first published in The New Paper.