Litigation: ‘Reckless’ spending costs husband share of wife’s pension

A husband who had ‘recklessly’ spent money from the joint estate belonging to him and his wife, whom he is now divorcing, will forfeit his half of his soon-to-be ex-wife's Government Employees Pension Fund payout. A Cape Times report says while the man is said to have been a cheating and abusive husband, the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) did not grant the forfeiture order based on that. The judge found that the husband squandered his and his wife's joint assets during their marriage by transacting in clandestine, questionable business dealings. From that fact alone, it would be a gross injustice to the wife to depreciate her pension fund any more than the patrimonial assets of the joint estate had been diminished and indebted by the husband, the court said. The wife said she only later discovered that her husband was spending the money in their joint estate on all sorts of dealings. The husband did not deny that he had spent the money on business dealings. But he told the court that he ‘does not discuss business with his wife’, something that has cost him dearly as the wife no longer has to share her pension with him. The court concluded that the husband recklessly diminished the patrimony of the joint estate through his business dealings. Thus, he had to forfeit his share of the wife's pension.