Valentine’s Day is upon us, and it’s a great opportunity for couples in a life partnership to review their legal and financial relationships. Not having in place proper legal documentation to define those relationships puts both partners, and their families, at risk of dispute, heartache and financial distress.

We discuss both the risks and the remedies with reference to a bitter family fight in the High Court over whether or not a couple, one of whom had died without making a will, had formed a “universal partnership” during their 26 years of life together.

Our criminal courts report a new surge in a particular type of workplace monetary crime – serious thefts and frauds by those in the most trusted financial positions such as accountants and bookkeepers. Some of the amounts involved are mind-boggling.

If you fall victim to such crime, what should you do? Lay charges? Institute disciplinary proceedings? We investigate in the context of the severe prison sentences being handed down in accordance with minimum sentencing provisions, and in the context of a recent Labour Court decision addressing the important question: Can you follow both courses of action simultaneously?

Many landlords have installed “alternative power sources”, like generators, inverters, solar panels and so on, to help their tenants survive the ongoing loadshedding.

A recent High Court fight between a mall owner and an upmarket gym over the gym’s access to the landlord’s generator arose when “out of the blue” the landlord demanded that the tenant start paying an additional “diesel recovery levy”. The gym refused to pay, the landlord cut off its access to the generator, and the tenant rushed to court asking for an urgent reconnection order. We discuss the outcome, and the Court’s reasons for its decision.

“Right now we have got a challenge because our growth levels are insufficient to be able to cope with higher levels of debt … I will have more on this in the February budget next month. I can tell you now, we are operating in a fairly constrained fiscal space so the message we are likely to put across in February is going to be a difficult one.”
(Minister of Finance, January 2024)

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has invited the public to share suggestions on the 2024 Budget he will deliver on Wednesday 21 February 2024.

Go to National Treasury’s “Budget Tips for the Minister of Finance” page and fill out the online form. 

“Pacta sunt servanda”

“Pacta sunt servanda” is an important and fundamental legal principle internationally. It simply means “agreements must be kept”. There are limitations, and increasingly in South Africa our courts have referred to values of ubuntu, fairness and public policy when holding unacceptable contractual terms to be unenforceable. But it’s a principle worth bearing in mind at all times – agree to something freely and voluntarily, and as a rule you will be held to your agreement by law.