JUDGMENT

Zaki Tun Azmi PCA:

[1] More often than not, a divorce is acrimonious. Each party will try to extract from the divorce the most to his or her benefit. They will fight over every little issue. Their respective lawyers will advise to take full advantage of every little technicality of the law. One party will claim and the other will strenuously resist. Each must also be aware of their rights and comply strictly with the law. This case is one example where such situation had arisen.

[2] From the facts that have been cited in much detail in the grounds of judgment of my learned brother Arifin Zakaria FCJ, it is clear that the respondent or her counsel had overlooked, not just once, but a number of times during the proceedings to file the correct documents within the permitted time.

[3] Reading from the chronological order of events in the record of appeal I notice that an application for ancillary reliefs was first fixed on 28 October 1999 but because the judge did not have time to hear, it was postponed to a date almost one year later ie, 14 September 2000. On this date, the application for ancillary reliefs by the respondent was struck out because neither the respondent nor h