A man who is suffering from stage four liver cancer has been thwarted in his bid to obtain an 'urgent' divorce while financial and other disputes are outstanding.

A Pretoria News report says the man approached the Western Cape High Court via an urgent application and said if he did not obtain a decree of divorce imminently, he would continue to be under undue strain in his day-to-day life.

He wanted to move on with his life and have closure with his wife.

According to him the stress and shame of being married to her affected his already compromised health.

The continued litigation was also traumatic to his elderly mother, his children and extended family, who were desperate for them to divorce, he said.

The husband reasoned that all the other outstanding issues in the divorce – such as maintenance and distribution of assets – could stand over until after the divorce.

The wife, however, vehemently opposed this application. She said her estranged husband was the beneficiary of several trusts and she wanted her share.

She accused him of wanting an urgent divorce as part of his tactic of trying to hide his assets from her.

Judge Daniel Thulare said the husband was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, but besides his mere say-so, there was no expert evidence that he was terminally ill.

‘From an inductive reading of the medical reports provided by the applicant, I understand stage four liver cancer to mean that the cancer may be spreading farther than the liver. I do not understand the medical reports to say that the applicant was diagnosed with cancer that cannot be treated into remission and which led to his death.’ 

While his diagnosis may be life threatening, it is not terminal, the judge said.

According to the Pretoria News, he found there was no reason for the husband to jump the queue.

Thulare said it seemed to him that the husband was an opportunist who tried to use his illness to his advantage to get the ‘painful’ divorce behind him ‘as soon as possible’. 

He said playing by the rules, including a frank and candid disclosure of the extent of the joint estate and by extension his available means, would not get him where he wanted to be. 

‘Some calculated risks should simply be that – expensive,’ the judge said, in slapping the husband with a punitive costs order.

Full Pretoria News report in The Star

Judgment