Six siblings have lost their High Court bid to hang on to their onetime family home and have their stepmother’s sale of the south Durban property set aside. The Mercury reports the siblings – and one of their wives – approached the courts last year, seeking to have the sale deemed unlawful and wrongful. They wanted the property declared part of their parents’ ‘matrimonial property’.

Both their stepmother and the new homeowners opposed their application, with the stepmother claiming she was – at the time of the sale of the property – the rightful owner and, as such, entitled to sell it. The new owners said they had purchased the property in good faith and believed they were entitled to ownership of it. In her judgment, handed down in the KZN High Court (Durban) last week, Judge Esther Steyn said that when the siblings’ father and his second wife married, they also did so in community of property and she became co-owner of all the assets he brought into their estate, including the property.

Steyn said that in terms of the Intestate Succession Act, his children were not entitled to inherit anything. She said they had ignored the operation of the Act, which was the legal basis for their stepmother’s right of ownership, coupled with her marriage. The case was dismissed with costs.

Full report in The Mercury (subscription needed)