A woman has successfully convinced the court to force her ex-husband to reimburse her R96 780 for the financial support she provided during their brief marriage, reports TimesLIVE.

The amount covers various household expenses she incurred while they were together as her husband was under debt review at the time. This follows a ruling by the Western Cape High Court, which overturned an earlier decision by the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court that had dismissed her claim for nafaqah under Muslim marriages.

Nafaqah is a mandatory financial maintenance and support a husband must provide for his wife and children in Islamic law.

In her judgment, Judge Mas-udah Pangarker found that the magistrate had made several material errors in both law and fact, warranting the High Court’s intervention.

‘First, the magistrate concluded in her judgment that the Islamic principle of nafaqah finds no place in SA law and repeated this view in her written reasons some months later. As a general proposition, and prior to the recognition of Muslim marriages, such finding would in all probability have been correct,’ Pangarker said.

The judge said during the marriage, it was common cause that the woman bore the lion’s share of the household expenses.

According to the judgment, the couple’s brief marriage from August 2020 to August 2021 was solemnised according to Islamic rites.

The woman is an attorney who ran her own legal practice, while the ex-husband was employed in the NGO sector, but was under debt review and had a duty to support his mother.

After their divorce, the woman sought to recover R154 118 from him.

During the appeal, the High Court looked into whether the woman’s payments were voluntary gifts or whether they gave rise to a legally enforceable obligation to be reimbursed by the ex-husband once he regained financial strength.

In his defence, the ex-husband said there was no agreement to repay the woman for her efforts and that she knew he was broke, according to TimesLIVE.

The judge said while the matter was a civil trial and not a family law dispute, the magistrate’s adoption of a strictly civil law outlook rejected the woman’s case based on nafaqah, and impacted on her findings in the judgment.

She said the magistrate had also paid little regard to evidence presented explaining the husband’s Islamic legal obligation of paying for essential needs of his spouse. It was not a voluntary gift to which he was entitled,’ said the judge.

The court, however, found that the woman’s claim of R154 118 was over-inclusive in that not every item she paid for fell within the scope of the tacit agreement or the nafaqah obligation.

Full TimesLIVE report