A multi-millionaire grandmother who controls her children through her fortunes got more than she bargained after she sought urgent help through the court to see her granddaughter (8), says a Pretoria News report.

The elderly woman, identified as R in a Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) judgment, demanded that the court immediately listen to her case as it involved a child.

She wanted to see the child every second weekend and speak to her on the phone ‘at reasonable times’.

In his ruling, Judge Roland Sutherland said he did not need to make a finding on whether the grandmother used her wealth to control her family. Nonetheless, he did find her 41-page affidavit – in which she demanded a hearing – to be an ‘arrogant abuse of the court process’.

This, he said, was especially so as the child’s mother, R’s daughter-in-law, was a good mother who cared for her child.

In reply to her demand the court had to urgently hear her matter as a child was involved, the judge said this statement in the absence of any allegation that the child was not cared for, was an abuse of the legal system.

The judge said the context in which the grandmother was making her demands was significant. Sutherland slapped the woman with a punitive costs order for her abuse of the legal system to suit her own needs.

Full Pretoria News report