Pretoria – Mrs M and Mr V, and Mr M and Mrs H – met, started visiting each other’s homes and exchanging partners. Eventually, Mrs M and Mr M decided to swop their respective partners for each other.
The temporary arrangement changed and eventually Mr M and Mrs M got married – the third marriage for each of them.
They started off happily but things soon started to become stormy. After seven years, Mrs M could no longer take it and divorced her husband.
Mrs M wanted a share in her husband’s millions now that they are divorced. She said they had an ante-nuptial contract and they were married in terms of the concept of accrual of assets.
According to her, the agreement was that they would start off their marriage by reflecting no assets in their joint estate. By the time they got divorced, the estate stood at R7.5million and Mrs M thus demanded half of this.
Mr M, on the other hand, claimed he was a “battered husband” and she should thus forfeit her right to half of his assets. According to him, in case the court ordered that she was entitled to his money, it should accept that he already had more than R2.7m in the kitty when they got married and this amount should be subtracted from the R7.5m in the estate at the time of the divorce.
Mrs M had the habit of expressing her emotions in dozens of letters she wrote to her husband – before and after the marriage – which were handed to court as exhibits. Mrs M used the letters to show what an “adoring” wife she was and Mr M used it to prove his wife was “manipulative and abusive”.
In the letters she expressed her love for him, said he “conducted the song in her heart”.
The couple, shortly before exchanging their vows, had an actuary draw up their ante-nuptial agreement, in which a balance at the time of marriage reflected no assets. Mr M, a businessman, said he was conned into signing the document, which he never read. He said his wife knew he had more than R2m of his own.
The actuary testified that she explained the consequences in detail to the couple, but they insisted they start of on a “nil” balance. Mr M said his wife was insincere in the letters and he called a witness who said he saw her on occasion slapping her husband in the face and throwing the contents of his glass at him. He injured his eye, but Mrs M told the court he was “once again drunk” and fell through his car door.
The judge accepted the evidence of the notary. She said that although Mrs M did slap her husband, it was striking from her letters how submissive she was. “She almost worshipped him. I see a person with very low self esteem.”
The judge said the husband was a control freak. Mr M could not expect his wife to forfeit the assets because she “misbehaved”, as they met under circumstances where they swopped partners. She ordered that Mr M pay Mrs M R3.5m.