Singapore court upholds 18-year prison term for woman who killed adoptive father
Singapore’s Court of Appeal on September 16 upheld the 18-year prison sentence for 35-year-old Tan Qiu Yan, who killed her adoptive father. Channel NewsAsia reports.
A panel of three judges dismissed her request for a reduced sentence. The court concluded that the previous sentence contained no error in the application of the law and was not manifestly excessive.
Housing dispute
In July 2025, Tan pleaded guilty to culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Her adoptive father, 67-year-old Tan Ah Bang, died in November 2022.
The court found that the woman’s key motive was her belief that her father was depriving her of the right to the flat that, she believed, had been promised to her by her late adoptive mother. The family lived in a flat in the Sengkang area.
Tan’s mother died of cancer in August 2022. After her death, her share in the flat automatically passed to the father. During the funeral, Tan began arguing with him over her mother’s financial assets and ownership of the home.
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The woman learned from a law firm that her father had become the sole owner of the flat and suspected that he might evict her. On November 3, 2022, she called the law firm and was told that she could not be added as one of the property’s owners. Tan then asked her father whether he would agree to share the flat with her; he refused. She then attacked him in the toilet with a cleaver and later called the police herself.
Defense arguments
The court recognized that at the time of the crime, Tan had persecutory-type delusional disorder against the background of schizoid personality disorder. She was also grieving after the death of her mother, who had been her main source of social support. This entitled her to a partial defense of diminished responsibility.
The defense sought to reduce the sentence to 12–15 years, citing a greater degree of mental impairment. Lawyers said that Tan believed her father wanted to kill her in order to retain all the assets. However, the Court of Appeal noted that she had not previously explained the motive for the killing in this way.
Justice Hri Kumar Nair noted that Tan delayed her decision to kill her father for two months after purchasing the cleaver. In the court’s view, this indicated her ability to control her actions.
