A woman has been refused her claim for R128,298 a month maintenance on top of her car, medical aid, cellphone and levy costs as interim relief pending her divorce.
The Cape Town high court found “Mrs F’s” claims to be excessive and “artificially inflated and out of kilter with ordinary requirements” due to the inclusion of such things as overseas holidays, “R15,000 per month for personal care (excluding a Pilates class, at R3,466)” and “nearly R20,000 per month for groceries, which by any standards is excessive for one person’s needs”.
The court found that until their divorce settlement is finalised, Mrs F should be able to get by on R70,000 a month, considering that “Mr F” was also paying her living expenses and granted her free use of the family holiday home in Nieu Bethesda.
The wealthy couple were married in August 1992 in community of property with accrual. They lived in Pretoria and had four children, the youngest now 18. Mrs F stopped working in 1997 and spent most of her adult life raising the children.
In March 2022, after the marriage disintegrated, Mrs F moved out of the family home into a rented flat where she plans to finalise her PhD in neuroscience at the University of Cape Town.
Throughout the marriage, Mr F was the sole breadwinner and one of the founders of a major coffee company. Now, as their divorce looms, the extent and source of his wealth is being questioned.
The court noted Mr F's version was that “the amount available to him to fund his monthly expenses totals R285,822.88”, while Mrs F was challenging this. She claimed he had access to considerably more — “in the region of R700,000 to R800,000 per month” — chiefly through two trusts.
Unable to resolve this conflict, acting judge GA Leslie said: “I accept for present purposes that the respondent is in a position to regularly access more than R285,000 per month. This is borne out inter alia by the fact that on his own version his expenses are in the region of R366,766.59 per month”.
The court noted that Mr and Mrs F enjoyed a comfortable life during their marriage.
“Whether this should be described as a life of ‘relative luxury’ as the applicant puts it, or an ‘above average modest lifestyle’ as the respondent puts it, is neither here nor there,” said Leslie.
Mrs F told the court that in January this year Mr F “reduced her allowance to what she regarded as the unreasonable figure of R70,000 per month”
On top of her maintenance needs, Mrs F also asked for a lump sum of R297,202 to cover her moving costs, furniture items and renovations to her Cape Town flat.
Mr F was found to be paying her R70,000 a month, R7,081 for her medical aid, her Volkswagen Beetle expenses and R2,978 a month on her cellphone contract.
Mrs F also asked for R475,000 in respect of her legal costs already incurred and another R555,000 in future. She also wanted R35,000 for a one-off payment to an industrial psychologist to assess her earning capacity.
Mrs F told the court that in January this year Mr F “reduced her allowance to what she regarded as the unreasonable figure of R70,000 per month” — far less than the R133,326 per month she had been receiving for the previous 10 months.
While Mr F did not dispute having paid the amount claimed by Mrs F, he said most had been for “certain one-off, extraordinary payments” aimed at covering her moving costs, and that her living expenses were about R63,000.
“It is reasonable to conclude that after she left the marital home in March 2022, [Mrs F] managed to sustain herself in a comfortable lifestyle on R60,000 to R70,000 a month,” the court said.
After deciding to divorce, the couple engaged in informal mediation through a family friend who is a lawyer, who helped them draw up a fair expense budget. But in January Mrs F submitted a significantly increased estimate of her monthly expenses — listing it at R110,869.
“This estimate contains several items that don’t fall within the ambit of her daily living expenses (for example, life insurance of R3,600, R5,000 savings, share investments of R10,000, pension fund of R5,000, children’s expenses of R10,000 — bearing in mind that none of them live with her). If these amounts are excluded from the budget, as they should be, the total reverts to about R70,000,” the court said.
In March, she produced an even further inflated budget, claiming R128,298.69 per month — adding in a loan payment for renovations she had done to her new flat without Mr F’s consent, Pilates classes, additional personal care and overseas holidays.
The court noted that in comparison, Mr F’s household monthly expenses were R109,551, and included the costs of two of their adult children who live with him.
“This supports the view that an amount of R70,950 is adequate to maintain the applicant in the lifestyle to which she is accustomed — particularly if her reasonable medical, accommodation and transport costs are catered for separately,” the court said.
Pending the final divorce settlement, Mr F must pay Mrs F R70,950 a month, keep her on his medical aid, pay her living costs and allow her access to the holiday home.
The court said Mrs F’s claims for overseas holidays were an excessive luxury not intended to be addressed by maintenance law.
In noting Mrs F’s claim for a lump sum of R300,000 for moving, refurnishing and renovation costs, the court denied this on grounds that Mr F had already paid about R800,000 for this and the flat she occupied had recently undergone a R1m renovation.
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