Antenuptial Contracts
If you’re getting married and your antenuptial contract (ANC) isn’t notarised or registered with the deeds office, what happens – particularly if you get divorced? When you enter into an ANC, the Deeds Registries Act of 1937 sets out several formalities. The first is that your ANC is notarised, and the second is that it’s registered in a deeds registry within three months. If you don’t follow these steps, South African legislation says that the ANC will not be valid against any person who was not a party to the agreement. But what does this mean? Let’s say, for example, that John and Sarah...
Read MoreThe Divorce Act and Pension Funds
Section 7(7)(a) of the Divorce Act of 1979 deals with a spouse’s pension interest. Before this amendment, a spouse’s pension interest didn’t form part of determining the estate’s value in a divorce. So, for example, if your spouse had R2 million in a pension fund, a divorce settlement didn’t need to include this when valuing the assets to be split – whether you’re married in community of property or subject to the accrual system. The Section 7(7)(a) amendment changed all of this, deeming the value of your pension to be part of your asset calculation along with the balance of your assets.....
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