97-year-old Wins Court Battle to Marry Longtime Lover after Son Challenges His Sanity

A Singapore court has ruled that a 97-year-old businessman is mentally fit to marry the woman he has been involved with for decades, dismissing an attempt by his son to block the union by having him declared legally incapacitated.

The elderly man, whose identity was withheld by the court, married in 1950 and had three sons with his wife. In 1971, he began a relationship with his secretary, a relationship that endured for half a century and produced another child. Although aware of the affair, his wife reportedly remained with him until her death in 2014.

Two years after becoming a widower, the man invited his longtime companion to live with him. Tensions within the family escalated sharply in 2021 when he announced plans to formalize the relationship through marriage.

His second son responded by petitioning a family court to have his father declared mentally unfit, claiming that a fall in 2017 had left him with dementia and vulnerable to manipulation by his partner. The son asked the court to stop the planned marriage and take control of his father’s affairs.

The move triggered a bitter legal showdown. The nonagenarian businessman—founder of a chemical company established in the 1960s—amended his will to cut out the son and a grandson, and filed a counterclaim seeking the return of 3.8 million Singapore dollars (about $3 million) and company assets. He also sought to evict his grandson from his property.

Medical experts told the court that while the man showed mild, age-related cognitive decline and some short-term memory loss, he remained fully capable of making decisions about his marriage and property. Audio recordings presented as evidence showed him to be lucid, coherent, and fully aware of his actions.

In a pointed observation, Judge Shobha Nair noted that despite alleging dementia, the son had endorsed his father’s appointment as chief executive officer of the family company in 2019—two years after the fall he claimed rendered his father incapable.

The court dismissed the son’s case, stressing that the relationship in question had lasted about 50 years and that there was no evidence the woman had deceived or exploited the elderly man to gain access to his wealth.

The son has since filed an appeal, meaning the 97-year-old will have to wait a little longer before walking down the aisle. But for now, the court has affirmed his right to decide—at any age—whom he chooses to marry.