A well-off businessman who pleaded poverty and failed to pay child support for his two children while he was employed as the COO at a national organisation has been ordered to step up by the Western Cape High Court.
The court held that the father, Mr P, must pay his ex-wife R10,000 a month for each of their two children — backdated to their 2010 divorce, that he be stripped of all guardianship rights and be made to comply with the recommendations made by the family counsellor handling their matter.
The counsellor recommended that the children — now a 17-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter — remain in the primary care of their mother and that both parents participate in mandatory co-parenting intervention to assist them to effectively resolve their conflict and work together in the best interest of the children.
Mr P was also ordered to “participate in structured intervention with a professional skilled in positive parenting techniques”, described as a course focusing on the role of the father in the family and his active involvement in raising his children.
Once completed he will then be required to participate in a structured reunification programme together with the son and daughter to address the lack of attachment and the mistrust in their relationship. The focus of the intervention or reunification would be aimed at rekindling their relationship and restoring the father’s contact.
According to the court, the marriage was terminated in the Joburg high court in August 2010. It was an acrimonious split and the divorce record ran into thousands of pages. After the divorce the couple tried to reconcile on several occasions, all of which “dismally failed” and Mr P moved out of the family home. At the time their son was four and their baby daughter was just five months old.
After this, “the parties frequently appeared in the Randburg magistrate’s court for various charges against each other”. Over a 15-month period Mrs P spent 24 days in court “defending various actions” in 2013 and 2014. During this time Mr P “stopped paying maintenance or paid frugally” and removed Mrs P and the children from his medical aid without notifying her.
We would file a claim for the money and ask for the respondent to be jailed until it is paid in full with interest. You see the money appear very quickly.
— Divorce lawyer, Shando Theron
At the time Mr P was employed as CFO of a large insurance outfit and his salary was R107,665 per month. He applied for his child maintenance to be reduced to R3,000 per month per child with no other contributions to medical aid, private school fees and related expenses which he paid irregularly. He resigned from his job in September 2013.
In 2014 Mrs P relocated to Cape Town for work purposes. At the time she applied for parenting mediation regarding parental and visitation responsibilities, as well as maintenance for the minor children. Plans were drawn up, but Mr P failed to respond. In 2018 an interim plan was made an order of court, and still Mr P failed to co-operate.
After becoming unemployed Mr P paid irregularly. In 2017 he started communicating with Mrs P again, asking to be accommodated more and for mediation. An amendment to the parenting plan included Mr P giving permission for the children to get passports and visas that would allow them to travel overseas. In November 2017 he started paying a flat R3,250 per month per child, which he increased to R3,500 per month per child a year later. He stopped paying altogether in February this year.
In the interim he reneged on his consent for the children to travel abroad and at all times led Mrs P to believe he was unemployed.
The children were invited to visit their maternal aunt in the Isle of Man — on a holiday she offered to pay for — but Mr P refused.
In 2017 their son was nominated to attend the Euro Soccer Tournament but was refused permission to go by Mr P. He did not change his stance, even when Mrs P offered him the opportunity to accompany their son on the trip as part of the parent contingent going with the players.
This prompted Mrs P to apply to the Children’s Court for permission to have passports issued for her children without their father’s consent, and also applied to the Cape high court for sole guardianship of the children — which she was granted in August 2018.
Mr P claimed he did not receive the application as he had been hospitalised for just more than a month in June 2018, and “was in a coma, and literally on his death bed”.
In 2020, during Covid, Mrs P lost her job and had to again resort to legal action against Mr P for child support payments. When she did a Google search for his name, she discovered that he had been appointed to his current position in 2016 already — during the time he was allegedly unemployed.
The court noted: “It was during this period that the shoe pinched as she had no income, no financial support from the respondent, and had the two minor children to support. In 2021, she then approached the Cape Town maintenance court to enforce the settlement agreements which were made an order of court when they divorced.”
In referring to Mr P’s requests to have his child support obligations drastically reduced, the court stated: “It is now disconcerting and or disheartening for the respondent to seek interpretation of the terms and conditions of which he is fully aware, having failed, or been unwilling to contribute the bare minimum to the upbringing of his offspring.”
The court found that Mr P was obligated to pay R10,000 a month per child according to a settlement agreement dated November 20 2009. The recommendations by the family advocate on the way forward to restoring the relationship between Mr P and his children was made an order of court.
Divorce lawyer Shando Theron, who specialises in acting in the best interests of the children caught up in acrimonious splits, said tumultuous court battles and warring parties were “often part of a normal divorce where there’s high conflict, because when you get on well you generally aren’t wanting to get divorced”.
He said Mrs P’s application for sole guardianship to secure passports for her children was another relatively common occurrence.
“That’s what we call an 18.3 application in a situation where one party is being obstructive for no good reason. What I would advise a parent to do is to issue the other with an order to sign permission for the passports within five days, and if they fail then the matter goes ahead without them and they are often slapped with an onerous costs order,” Theron said.
He said he regularly sees desperate moms and dads fighting hard in monstrous situations, but equally comes across parents who resort to all manner of deception in their efforts to maximise their claims or avoid paying fairly.
He said parents who spend years fighting against their obligations faced the possibility of a claim — such as this case where Mr P will have to pay back the full amount he agreed to in 2009.
“We would file a claim for the money and ask for the respondent to be jailed until it is paid in full with interest. You see the money appear very quickly,” Theron said.
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