“Marriage is the chief cause of divorce” (Groucho Marx)

This Valentine’s Day, think about the legal aspects of your romantic relationship. They’re a lot less exciting than the traditional declarations of love backed up by chocolates and flowers, but they’re just as important in ensuring a strong, committed life partnership in which both of you is clear as to how your respective financial and legal responsibilities are defined.

A recent High Court decision once again puts a spotlight on the fact that “life partner” couples are at ongoing legal and financial risk unless they sign both cohabitation agreements and updated wills.

The problem - there’s no such thing as a “common law marriage”

Our law does not recognise the concept of a “common law marriage”. Either you are formally married, or you miss out on many of the legal protections available to married couples. The result – if you split, or when (not if) one of you dies, the less financially strong life partner could well be prejudiced, perhaps even left destitute after many decades of life together.

The solution – a cohabitation agreement with updated wills

Luckily these two documents give both of you quick and effective protection -

1. A cohabitation agreement tailored to meet your particular circumstances and needs. It should at the minimum cover questions such as whose name assets and liabilities will be in, who will cover what expenses, how you will split your financial affairs if you part ways, your undertakings to each other regarding financial support and maintenance, parental rights and duties regarding children and so on.
   
   
2. A will (“Last Will and Testament”). You could make two separate wills or one joint one but either way make sure to comply with all formalities to ensure validity and set out your respective wishes clearly and unambiguously. A vital (and all-too-often overlooked) aspect here is to diarise regular reviews of your will/s in case they need updating to take account of ongoing life and financial changes.

Let’s turn now to a “second prize” alternative - proving a “universal partnership”.

What is a “universal partnership” and how do you prove it?

If for whatever reason you don’t have both a cohabitation agreement and wills in place, you may still have a “get out of jail free” card in the form of a universal partnership.

These extracts from the High Court judgment (formatting supplied) set out what you’ll need to prove -

• “A universal partnership is an agreement between individuals to share their property and their gains and losses. The partnership need not be formed for a commercial purpose.
  
  
• It regularly comes into existence, whether expressly or tacitly, between unmarried cohabitees, although cohabitation is not essential.
  
  
• The requirements for the existence of a universal partnership are the same as those for partnership in general.
  
  
• Where a tacit universal partnership is alleged, a court will confirm its existence if the conduct of the parties is such that it is more probable than not that such a partnership agreement had been reached between them.
  
  
• A partnership exists if “each of the parties brings something into the partnership or binds themselves to bring something into it, whether it be money, or labour, or skill”; if the agreement is struck for “the joint benefit of both parties”; and if the object of the partnership is material gain.
  
  
• The question is … whether, on evaluating those facts as a whole, the probable inference is that there was a universal partnership.”

A bitter family fight shows why it’s second prize

• In the case in question, life partners had for 26 years shared all their assets “akin to a marriage in community of property”. Importantly, they had shared the “benefits and burdens” of a number of property development ventures. They had, said the Court, each brought something into the partnership, her contribution being mostly financial, his (as an architect) mostly in “sweat equity”. Their partnership was not just a life partnership, it “was also plainly at least partly about material gain.”
  
  
• Their relationship was terminated by the death of the one partner, who died “intestate” (leaving no will in place) after developing dementia. The other partner had suggested they each execute wills leaving everything to each other and he had done so, but she had declined as she was unwilling to contemplate her mortality.
  
  
• Her daughter as executor of her mother’s deceased estate refused to recognise any claim by the surviving life partner. Quarrels and evictions followed, with ultimately a hard-fought High Court battle.
  
  
• The Court found that the survivor had on the facts succeeded in proving the existence of a universal partnership. Critically, it held that the parties’ partnership “was also plainly at least partly about material gain” and that the surviving partner should anyway inherit half of the deceased’s estate in terms of a principle previously accepted by our courts that “partners in a permanent life partnership in which the partners have undertaken reciprocal duties of support are entitled to inherit as spouses would.”
  
  
• Accordingly, the survivor gets a full half of the deceased partner’s entire estate, whilst the daughter is removed as executor and ordered her to pay the legal costs.

The winner is…

The bottom line however is that the element of “material gain” which so clearly applied to the joint acquisition of assets in this particular life partnership will be absent (or at least extremely difficult to prove) in many other cohabitation agreements.

First prize must therefore always be to avoid the risks, delay, stress and cost of trying to prove the existence of a universal partnership and/or reciprocal duties of support by having in place both a comprehensive cohabitation agreement and a joint will or reciprocal wills.

"It's the profile of the most trusted individual, in a position of trust, like an accountant or bookkeeper. They usually never take leave, and someone who never allows anyone access to their system would go to the length of taking their laptops with them while they are on holiday so that they can continue working. They are usually caught in the moment of forced absence from work." (Specialised Commercial Crimes Court as reported by News24)

Our courts report a surge in serious cases of theft from employers by their most trusted employees – often bookkeepers and accountants. The greater the trust placed in these dishonest individuals, the more they steal and the longer they get away with it.

Particularly in more serious cases, employers should lay criminal charges as well as instituting disciplinary proceedings. Criminal courts are imposing hefty deterrent sentences, and the Labour Court has confirmed that laying charges does not prejudice the simultaneous disciplinary process.

Minimum sentences apply

Firstly, minimum sentencing provisions apply when large amounts have been stolen. Even first offenders must be sentenced to a minimum of 15 years’ imprisonment for any fraud or theft involving more than R500,000 (R100,000 for persons acting together or R10,000 for law enforcement officers) unless “substantial and compelling circumstances exist which justify the imposition of a lesser sentence”.

Let’s look at some recent cases -

• 50 years for a R537m theft: Over some two decades of employment in a position of trust as an accountant, an employee admitted to 336 counts relating to thefts totalling an astonishing R537m. She had tried to cover up with fraudulent VAT claims and although her lavish lifestyle (she spent R5m on one specific day) attracted attention, it seems that it was only an anonymous tip off that eventually led to her detection and arrest. She was sentenced by a Specialised Commercial Crimes Court (SCCC) to 50 years behind bars.
  
  
• 10 years for a R13.4m fraud: A creditor’s clerk, once again in a position of trust, pleaded guilty to 972 counts of fraud totalling over R13.4m and stretching over 9 years, only discovered when she went on sick leave. The mitigating factors in her case (she has health issues and is 65 years old) led the High Court to reduce her 15-year sentence to a below-the-minimum 10 years. 
  
  
• 18 years for a R14m theft: A financial manager stole over R14m, leaving the couple who had trusted him with their finances without their life savings (including a cancer diagnosis payout) and on their knees financially and emotionally. The Court’s sentence of 3 years more than the minimum reflected its finding that the aggravating factors justified removing the manager from society, despite his gambling addiction and previous clean record.  
  
• 15 to 30 years for a R52m fraud? A trusted store accountant “viewed as a brother” by its traumatised owners (one of whom even contemplated suicide), admitted to two counts of fraud totalling R52m as a result of his gambling addiction. He will only be sentenced in March, but it seems from media reports that he is unlikely to receive less than the minimum 15 years’ imprisonment per count, possibly to run concurrently. 

The Labour Court confirms you can do both

A municipal manager with 15 years’ service was criminally charged with very serious frauds. He asked the Labour Court to stop his employer’s disciplinary process against him, arguing that in defending himself at the disciplinary hearing he might have to give self-incriminating evidence.

The Labour Court disagreed, finding that the employee had several layers of protection available to him in the criminal trial, and clearing the employer to proceed with the disciplinary hearing simultaneously. In fact, said the Court, “It is tantamount to an abuse of court process by a person holding a managerial position using court processes to prevent his employer from subjecting him to a disciplinary process under the guise of protecting his constitutional rights.” It accordingly ordered him to pay all costs on the punitive attorney and client scale – a very unusual censure in labour law matters where both sides are normally left to cover their own costs.

Loadshedding continues to plague us and our businesses, and when tenants are connected during power cuts to their landlord’s alternative power source – such as a generator – it is essential for both parties to understand their respective rights.

Lights out for a shopping mall gym

• An upmarket gym had relied for years on its shopping mall landlord’s generator to get through loadshedding, without having to pay extra for it.
  
  
• “Out of the blue” the landlord demanded a monthly “diesel recovery levy”, and a dispute arose over whether it was entitled to do so or whether the cost was already covered by an existing “all-inclusive monthly fee for all expenses related to the lease of the premises”.
  
  
• The parties agreed to refer that dispute to arbitration but then the landlord decided to flex its muscles by cutting off the gym’s connection to the generator.
  
  
• The gym obtained an urgent reconnection order from the High Court. Although that is only a temporary solution for the tenant (it must still win the arbitration or pay the extra levy), the Court’s decision is a significant one in that it has confirmed the principle that access to an alternative source of power does fall under the protection of the “spoliation” principle.

“Spoliation” - no one can take the law into their own hands

No one can go the self-help route and take the law into their own hands by removing property from someone else without a court order. Anyone deprived of possession like that can urgently obtain a “spoliation” order forcing an immediate return to it of the property.

At this stage, the court won’t be interested in who has the legal right to the property – all it will look at is whether -

1. The possessor was in “peaceful and undisturbed possession” and
   
   
2. It was unlawfully deprived of that possession.  

That’s straightforward with possession of a “corporeal” thing like a car, or a house, or a parrot. But when it comes to an “incorporeal” like access to an alternative energy source, things become more complicated. Now you must prove that you had “quasi-possession” of the power supply.

As complicated as that may sound, what’s important on a practical level for both landlords and tenants is that this judgment has confirmed in principle that access to an alternative power supply such as a generator falls under the law’s protection as much as possession of a corporeal “thing”.

The bottom line

Whether or not a tenant has an enforceable right to its landlord’s alternative power supply – and if so whether it must pay extra for it - will depend on the wording of the lease.

But the landlord cannot just cut off an existing power supply without following legal process.

“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.