- A husband sent agents to repossess a Mercedes-Benz reserved for his wife and their two children under a Rule 43 order.
- The wife was prevented from leaving her home after men blocked her driveway while she tried to fetch her children from school.
- The High Court ruled that changed circumstances do not entitle a spouse to ignore or rewrite an existing court order.
A bitter divorce dispute has led to a significant family law judgment after the High Court in Cape Town ruled that spouses cannot take the law into their own hands when they believe an interim court order is outdated.
The case stemmed from an ongoing divorce between a husband and wife. In May 2021, the court granted a Rule 43 maintenance order requiring the husband to keep a Mercedes-Benz available for his wife and their two minor children’s use until the divorce was final. The car was registered to the husband’s close corporation, where he was the only member.
Husband decided the order no longer applied
The trouble began after the husband damaged his own car in a collision. He claimed his wife had bought another vehicle and that the reason for allowing her to use the Mercedes no longer existed.
His attorneys wrote to the wife’s legal team, saying a towing company would be picking up the car. Instead of asking the court to change the Rule 43 order, the husband authorised someone to collect the Mercedes on behalf of his close corporation.
Men blocked the driveway
Things escalated when a tracer came to the wife outside her home and told her he’d been sent to collect the Mercedes. A few days later, he returned with two other men, parked across her driveway and kept her from leaving to fetch her children from school.
The men insisted on taking the car and refused to leave, forcing the wife’s lawyers to send a candidate attorney to collect the children instead. Although the agents were shown the Rule 43 order, they came back the next morning and repeated their demand.
Court rejects self-help
Judge M Francis found that the husband fully understood the Rule 43 order but chose to act on his belief that it should no longer apply. The judge said, “A court order binds until it is varied or set aside, regardless of what a litigant may later think of its usefulness.”
Judge Francis stressed that Rule 43 provides a legal procedure for changing interim maintenance arrangements if circumstances change. A spouse cannot sidestep that process by sending agents to repossess property protected by a court order.
Deliberate breach of the Rule 43 order
The court found that sending men to recover the Mercedes was a deliberate breach, as it interfered with the wife’s court-protected right to use the car.
Judge Francis concluded, “A litigant who honestly believes an order has ceased to bind him applies to be released from it. He does not send men to take the thing by self-help.”
The High Court declared the husband in contempt, imposed a 30-day prison sentence suspended for two years, interdicted both the husband and his close corporation from trying to take the Mercedes or harass the wife, and ordered them to pay punitive legal costs.
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