THE happy news is that it will be easier from next year for women to seek and enforce maintenance orders against ex-husbands for regular support payments to them and their children.
The sad news is that the tougher measures Community Development, Youth and Sports Minister Vivian Balakrishnan announced are needed at all. What happened to the once widely accepted notion that it is a man's responsibility to take care of his children and their mother, even after his marriage has ended?
Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days, before the 1961 Women's Charter came into being, when a man could have more than one wife, but at least then he met his obligation of providing for his 'extended' family.
The question is related to another: Why are more and more marriages ending in divorce?
NEXT: >>More marriages end in divorce
anyway, here's a Singapore father I know who is going through such a turmoil, he has a group on Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=128445290045#!/profile.php?id=100000511793639