Rights and obligations of unmarried fathers – a court should never be biased

Rights and obligations of unmarried fathers

The facts in FS v JJ and Another 2011 (3) SA 126 (SCA) were as follows. A child, C, was born while the appellant, the father, and her mother, who died shortly after her birth, were living together. They intended to marry. The first respondent was C’s maternal grandmother, who was married to the second respondent (the grandparents). The father and grandparents had been engaged in a protracted battle for the custody of C, during which several applications were heard in the Northern and Western Cape High Courts. The present appeal was against a series of orders made by Kgomo JP in the Northern Cape High Court in terms of which custody of C was awarded to the grandparents – an order at odds with the other orders made by both the Northern and Western Cape High Courts.

On appeal, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) was asked to determine, inter alia, the best interests of C, the rights of unmarried fathers, and the extent of grandparents’ rights in respect of their grandchildren.

As to the grandparents’ rights and responsibilities, the court held that these were from 1 April 2010 governed by ss 23 and 24 of the Children’s Act, which governed non-parental rights to care and guardianship. Before then, grandparents had no inherent rights or responsibilities and it was only the High Court that could confer access, custody or guardianship on a grandparent if it was in the best interests of a child, which had to be assessed in the light of the rights of the biological parents.

As far as the father’s allegation of bias by the trial court was concerned, the present court held that it was clear from the conduct and language of Kgomo JP that he was biased against the father and that he had entirely failed to consider C’s best interests. Kgomo JP’s decision in ordering that C be returned to her grandparents had no basis in fact or in law, evinced bias on his part, and failed to consider the only real issue – C’s best interests.

It was clear from the various reports studied by the court that C’s best interests would be served by placing her with her father.

The High Court is the guardian of all children. However at times as seen in this case, the court was biased against the father of the child. One hears allot of father’s complain of a biased attitude that prevails in our courts. Ultimately the only issue that a court should pronounce on is whether its decision is in the best interests of the child. The interests of the parties should always be secondary to that of the child and the court as guardian of all minors should always live up to such expectation.

About the author:

Bertus Preller is a Family Law and Divorce Attorney based in Cape Town and has more than 20 years experience in most sectors of the law and 13 years as a practicing attorney. He specializes in Family law and Divorce Law at Abrahams and Gross Attorneys Inc. and deals with Family and Divorce matters across the country. Bertus is also the Family Law expert on Health24.com and on the expert panel of Law24.com and is frequently quoted on Family Law issues in newspapers such as the Sunday Times and Business Times. His clients include celebrities, actors and actresses, sportsmen and sportswomen, television presenters and various high net worth individuals.  His areas of expertise are Divorce Law, Family Law, International Divorce Law, Divorce Mediation, Parenting Plans, Parental Responsibilities and Rights, Custody (care and contact) of children, same sex marriages, unmarried fathers rights, domestic violence matters, digital rights, media law and criminal law.

Interview with Bertus Preller, a celebrity divorce attorney based in Cape Town

Business Times Interview – by Adele Shevel

Maria Shriver’s doing it; Tiger Wood’s wife did it. Making the decision to terminate a marriage is a tough one, and the chances are it’s followed by an even more traumatic lead-up to the divorce.

Shriver and Woods are very wealthy, their husbands hugely successful, and high profile infidelity was peppered into the mix. But it’s not only the rich who need to ascertain the financial situation of their husbands.

Women are encouraged to gather as much financial information about their husband’s financial affairs before the divorce proceedings commence, to establish the magnitude of the estate.

Bertus Preller, a celebrity divorce attorney at Abrahams and Gross in Cape Town provides guidance as to how to get your affairs in order before making that final call.

“It’s extremely important for any woman to know what’s going on in her husband’s financial affairs. It’s difficult when you don’t have access to his share portfolio or balance sheet, but one must reasonably expect to get an idea of financial affairs.”

An attorney cannot negotiate on behalf of a client without knowing in advance what the estate is worth.

In many divorce settlements, the wife ends up seeing what the estate is worth after it takes place.

• Make copies of your husband’s bank statements, credit card statements and get hold of the short-term insurance policies as well as copies of pension funds and retirement funds. This will provide input on the extent of assets available and the value of the estate.
• Build a clause into the settlement agreement to say if any assets that come to light after the divorce settlement, the wife is entitled to 50% of those assets and the husband will have to pay the legal fees involved in this process.
• A more accurate sense of assets will come to light if the divorce is contested as parties are required to disclose any information to do with financial affairs. The husband can be required under oath to make full disclosure of his assets, and it is perjury if he doesn’t.
• Women are advised not to leave the matrimonial home if children are involved, because it provides a sense of stability for the kids. It’s better for the husband to leave. If he makes himself guilty of abuse, the wife can get a restraining order to evict him from the property. In some instances, the husband can be restricted from accessing certain parts of the home.
• Where the parties are married in community of property the wife is entitled to half the pension or retirement annuity fund. In a marriage out of community with the accrual, the pension fund will be regarded as part of the husband’s assets for purposes of calculating the accrual.
• In terms of the Divorce Act, the wife (if married in community of property) can choose to ask for the pension fund money to be paid in cash, or transferred to a pension fund of her choice.  Normally pension funds pay out the wife’s portion in 3 to 6 months after the divorce. Wives of employees for the SA government have had to wait for her husband to resign or die before she could access her portion of his pension. But this might change — a judgement issued this month said it was unconstitutional for the wife of a government employee not to be allowed to access his pension following a divorce.
• Make a list of your monthly income and expenses, as if you’re going to live on your own with your children. It’s important because you get situations where the wife is not working or earns much less than the husband and doesn’t have the money to fight a divorce battle.  She can bring an application pending a divorce, for interim maintenance, which means contributing maintenance before the divorce is finalised. She can also apply for contribution to her legal expenses. If interim-maintenance is granted and the husband does not comply with the court order, he is in contempt of court.
• In some instances the wife can apply for emergency monetary relief in the magistrate’s court pending the institution of an application for interim maintenance by utilizing the provisions of the domestic violence act because the husband has blocked the use of credit.
• Interim maintenance falls away once the divorce order is granted. There have been situations where the wife has been granted very favourable interim maintenance terms, so she stalls the divorce in order to continue getting a hearty amount of money each month.
• The granting of interim maintenance divorce cannot be appealed. The only way the husband can minimize this is if he goes back to court and explains and proves that his financial situation has changed so much that he’s entitled to a reduction. But this does not happen easily.
• Many battles in a divorce surround the children. Normally the wife is the parent of primary residence and the husband the parent of alternate residence. Increasingly, there’s a shared parenting approach with children staying with the mother for a week and then the father for a week and each party takes care of the children during that period.  “We see a lot of children used as a weapon. I tend to immediately get a parenting plan in place, and register that with the family advocate and stipulate that if issues arise with parenting and the children they need to go to a psychologist or a social worker”.
• In matters where money is not fought over, it may make financial sense to go to one lawyer who can work for both parties. But a divorce that is acrimonious requires that each party needs a lawyer to assist.
• A few mediation organizations exist where people can see a mediator to resolve disputes, to settle with both parties. The mediator doesn’t have the authority to issue and award damages but he can facilitate the process. If an abusive husband is involved, mediation is unlikely to work.  But it can work if the divorce is not acrimonious. Parties have to pay. “Sometimes this route can be more expensive than an uncontested divorce, depending on the amount of sessions that the parties have to attend” says Preller.
• Where a couple owns a property together, they need to decide whether both parties want to keep the interest in the property, sell the property and split the proceeds, or whether one wants to buy out the other. The decision has financial implications because of transfer duties and tax.
• It’s important to consider instances where the husband has no assets. A policy should be taken out in the event that the husband passes away and there is no money to help cover maintenance, in case of his death.

“The decision to divorce is a business decision. You need to look at what happens until the children turn 21, that there’s maintenance, medical cover for them, a school education and whether it’s government or private school and tertiary education,” says Preller.

About Bertus Preller

Bertus Preller is a Family Law and Divorce Attorney based in Cape Town and has more than 20 years experience in most sectors of the law and 13 years as a practicing attorney. He specializes in Family law and Divorce Law at Abrahams and Gross Attorneys Inc. and deals with Family and Divorce matters across the country.Bertus is also the Family Law expert on Health24.com and on the expert panel of Law24.com and is frequently quoted on Family Law issues in newspapers such as the Sunday Times and Business Times. His clients include celebrities, actors and actresses, sportsmen and sportswomen, television presenters and various high net worth individuals.

His areas of expertise are Divorce Law, Family Law, International Divorce Law, Divorce Mediation, Parenting Plans, Parental Responsibilities and Rights, Custody (care and contact) of children, same sex marriages, unmarried fathers rights, domestic violence matters, digital rights, media law and criminal law.

Bertus also has a passion for gadgets and technology and he co-pioneered the development of technology in which the first book in the world was delivered to a mobile phone utilizing sms and java technology and also advised a number of South African book publishers on the Google Book settlement class action and negotiated contracts with the likes of Google and Amazon.com.

He specializes in Divorce Law, Family Law, Divorce Mediation, Parenting Plans, Parental Responsibilities and Rights, Custody (care and contact) of children, same sex marriages, unmarried fathers rights, domestic violence matters, international divorce law, digital rights, media law and criminal law.

Divorce, can my spouse evict me from the matrimonial home?

The provision of accommodation and household assets forms part of the duty to support and therefore the occupation of the matrimonial home and the use of the household assets are closely related to the duty of support.

During the subsistence of the marriage both spouses are entitled to live in the matrimonial home and to make use of the household assets such as appliances and furniture, irrespective of whether they were married in or out of community of property and irrespective of which spouse owns or rents the matrimonial home or household assets. The latter is a unique and invariable consequence of a marriage.

As a general rule the spouse who rents or owns the property may therefore not eject the other spouse from the matrimonial home without providing him or her with a suitable alternative of accommodation, nor may the other spouse eject the spouse that rents or owns the property from the matrimonial home. The interests of the children as well as matrimonial guilt play an important role. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa also plays a role in that Section 28 (2) requires that a child’s best interests must be paramount in all matters relating to children. Therefore even the “innocent” spouse can be ejected from the matrimonial home if that will be in the best interests of the child.

A spouse who is subject to ejectment from the matrimonial home or who is barred from using the household assets can approach the court for an interdict to stop the other spouse from doing so. If the right has already been violated and for example where the other spouse has changed the locks or has denied the other spouse access, the aggrieved spouse can approach the court to invoke what is called in law the mandament van spolie.

I recently handled a matter where one spouse was ejected from the family home without an offer of alternative accommodation. We applied under the Domestic Violence Act, 116 of 1998 for emergency monetary relief pending the institution of a Rule 43 Application and were successful in obtaining monetary relief for the deposit on a new house and the monthly rental instalments.

Written by:

Bertus Preller

Family Law Attorney

Abrahams and Gross Inc.

http://www.divorceattorney.co.za

info@divorceattorney.co.za