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.
The Gauteng High Court in Pretoria sentenced the father to 60 days imprisonment for failing to adhere to an earlier court order, which required him to pay maintenance to both his wife and son during ongoing divorce proceedings.
The court had previously ordered the man to make certain payments in the interim, pending the final divorce settlement. The father has been in arrears for two years, claiming that he had paid R144,000 to his wife in 2022, stating that this amount was sufficient and that he owed nothing more.
However, his downfall was a letter he sent to his wife’s attorneys, in which he acknowledged being in arrears and claimed he had fallen on hard times. The wife then sought a court order holding her husband in contempt, requesting that he be committed to prison and fined.
According to the previous order, he was meant to pay the wife R10,500 a month in maintenance and R4,000 towards his son. The wife stated that he is R115,500 in arrears for her maintenance, R44,000 for the child's maintenance, R27,280 in respect of arrears in school fees, and R11,000 in respect of the child’s medical needs.
Although the wife’s counsel noted that the child no longer attends school, as he is now 20, they argued that the father remains liable for historically unpaid school fees. The husband argued that they had entered into settlement negotiations and that a formal settlement agreement had been prepared, but never signed by his wife.
He stated that in September 2022, he paid R144,000 towards the wife and believed it was sufficient. However, about a year after making that payment, he admitted to his wife’s lawyers that he had been in arrears with maintenance. The court deemed this a clear admission of contempt.
“The respondent’s further defence that the minor child has since become a major and is self-sustained has no merit and is rejected by this court. It is a trite legal principle that a minor child is entitled to be maintained until he or she is self-sufficient,” the court stated.
The court added that if the man believed he no longer needed to pay maintenance towards his wife and that he had fallen on hard times, he should have approached the court for assistance. The court maintained that a person cannot simply ignore a court order and that maintenance obligations as per a court order must be honoured.
Furthermore, it was found that sending the man to direct imprisonment at this stage would be pointless, as he needed to work in order to fulfil his financial obligations. However, the man was given until the end of January next year to pay his arrears; otherwise, he would face two months in jail.
Pretoria News