Pretoria - It was a question of “he cheated, no she cheated” when the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, was confronted by a case of a divorcing couple.
The wife argued that she was entitled to half of their estate, but the husband wanted her to forfeit it “as she was not so innocent as she claimed”.
Judge Nomonde Mngqibisa-Thusi in her judgment only referred to the couple as Mrs M and Mr J to protect their two children from the details of them airing their dirty laundry in court.
The couple were married in community of property in August 2002 and in 2014 Mrs M instituted divorce proceedings.
She obtained the divorce at the time by default, as the husband never opposed it.
But when he got wind that he was not only divorced, but also 50% poorer as the court afforded his wife half of his assets, he rushed to court to have that order overturned. The court did grant him that order and the matter regarding the assets was heard now.
Mrs M told the court that for the first five years she was happily married, but her husband started drinking and having adulterous affairs.
At one stage she had found him sleeping with another woman in his car.
He accused her of having affairs, being a witch and having married him only for his house.
Mrs M said her policeman husband often threatened her with his service pistol. Their son also said he found his father sleeping with another woman.
The husband, on the other hand, said that apart from her affairs she bullied him physically and emotionally. He told the judge the wife of one of her lovers had sent her a letter to leave her husband alone.
The husband further claimed his wife tried to run him over with her car. He said he once caught a man inside her car and he then took her car away from her.
The woman admitted that while they were still sharing a home, she did go to parties, but she denied that men were involved.
She said she was a good wife who did not assault her husband.
The husband said that when he was on night duty, his wife would accuse him of seeing other women. The woman she caught in his car, he explained, was a mere “tired colleague” who wanted to have her lunch in the car and then take a nap. As he too was tired, he decided to sit with her in his car.
Regarding the woman in his bed, the incident which his son complained about, the man explained that as his wife wanted to divorce him, his son had given him his blessing to have a girlfriend.
The man was adamant that his “cheating wife” was the cause of their divorce and that she should thus forfeit the benefits of their joint estate.
Meanwhile, she had obtained a protection order against him, but the husband explained that the magistrate told him it would be easier to just agree to the order than fight it. That was why he did not defend the order.
The judge said the versions of each party as to the cause of the breakdown of their marriage were mutually destructive.
“Each party blames the other On probabilities I am of the view that the version of the plaintiff (the woman) regarding her husband assaulting her and having affairs is more probable,” the judge said.
The wife said he also could not explain why his service pistol had been taken away from him if he did not threaten to shoot his wife.
It was found that the wife was entitled to half of their home, as well as to half of the proceeds of his government pension fund.