Insights and commentary from the offices of Simon Dippenaar
And how to call it quits – relationship advice from a divorce lawyer You wouldn’t expect a divorce lawyer to give relationship advice. After all, it’s in our (professional) interests for marriages to fail. But the truth is…we don’t want couples to divorce. Nothing makes us happier than when a client withdraws from divorce proceedings […]
We’ve written about child maintenance and about pensions in the context of divorce, but not as one topic. Generally, a pension fund is not a target for maintenance arrears, but this article from Legal Wise explains that in some circumstances a court may grant a warrant of execution for arrear maintenance to be paid from […]
A parent’s obligation to financially maintain their children does not stop once the child turns 18, but continues until the child is no longer financially dependent on the parent, the court remarked after a father claimed he no longer needed to pay maintenance towards his now over 18-year-old child. Reprinted from iol.co.za, by Zelda Venter […]
What protection does the law offer to life partners? South Africa post-1994 has a track record of progressive thinking regarding relationships and the law. We were one of the first countries in the world to recognise same-sex marriage. Couples who prefer to marry according to traditional cultural laws can do so with the full blessing […]
The importance of cultural sensitivity Child care and contact is always a delicate matter in any divorce case, involving bargaining, compromise, high emotional investment and, sometimes, considerable conflict. If one parent decides to relocate to another country after divorce, the negotiations can be even more fraught and complex. Sometimes international relocation will be in pursuit […]
Post-pandemic trends in technology and family law Many things changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some practices we were all glad to see end, such as wearing face masks and needing proof of a negative test result before air travel. But some behaviours were introduced that have become mainstream, such as working from home and virtual […]
We’ve been following the Women’s Legal Centre Trust v President of the Republic of South Africa and Others (2022) case since the beginning, and have written extensively on the Divorce Amendment Bill, which will grant women in Muslim marriages the same rights on divorce as their compatriots in conventional unions. Although the Bill was signed […]
New strategies for modern families The concept of “family” is changing. It no longer automatically implies a heterosexual couple and 2.4 children. Same-sex couples adopt or have their own children, either through donor insemination or surrogacy. As more marriages end in divorce, we see more blended families as individuals find new life partners, with or […]
