Emeritus Professor Leong Wai Kum honoured with Family Law Prize

NUS Law is delighted to launch of the Leong Wai Kum Prize in Family Law, which will be awarded for the first time at the end of this academic year to the best student in the module Family Law.

The prize recognises Emeritus Professor Leong Wai Kum’s tremendous impact on the development of Family Law in Singapore, and her outstanding contributions to NUS Law in the course of her 40-year career. Thanks to generous donations from colleagues and friends, more than $20,000 has been raised to date — those who still wish to contribute towards the Prize are encouraged to do so via the donation link here: https://bbis.nus.edu.sg/donate/fol/leong-wai-kum-prize-in-family-law

Wai Kum was the first graduate of the newly established Faculty of Law, University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur to join NUS Law as a lecturer. She also holds a postgraduate degree from Harvard University. She is synonymous with Family Law in Singapore and her book Elements of Family Law is now the definitive textbook on the subject. Her four decade career at NUS Law was distinguished by her significant influence on the development of Family Law, and she has groomed many of today’s leading practitioners and lawmakers. She was also active in law reform, participating in every major review of family law in Singapore’s history. In 1979, she proposed the creation of a new Family Court — something that was finally realised in a second round of reforms in 1995. She also made important recommendations on child maintenance that were adopted far more quickly.

Other contributions include the treatment of transgender persons under Singapore law, presumptions of legitimacy within marriage, guardianship law, and division of matrimonial assets. Last year, in the case of BOI v BOJ, the Court of Appeal was faced with a novel question of whether lottery winnings constitute a matrimonial asset. The Court chose to turn to academic literature before reviewing the case law on point: “Whilst this might appear unusual, we adopt this approach because at least one significant case relies on the relevant legal literature. We also note that the relevant legal literature is by the leading scholar on family law in Singapore, Prof Leong Wai Kum.” Another focus of her energies was to track the impact of law on women in Singapore. She co-managed a major local interdisciplinary research project to establish the baselines culminating in the article “Singapore Women: Three Decades of Change”.

Wai Kum retired from NUS Law as Emeritus Professor in 2020. She is currently Professor at the SUSS School of Law, set up to educate family and criminal law practitioners, where she heads the Family Law team.