- The Western Cape High Court has confirmed that a maintenance order covering all children’s educational costs extends to university fees.
- The father’s claim that the order was meant only for school expenses was found inconsistent with the order’s language and intent.
- The court said that leaving out university would put the daughter’s studies in jeopardy and make little sense.
A dispute over university fees ended up in court after a father stopped paying for his daughter’s tertiary education, even though a maintenance order required him to cover “all the children’s educational costs”.
Acting Judge N Mayosi of the High Court in the Western Cape had to decide if a pendente lite maintenance order from the Strand Regional Court in August 2025 included university fees. The issue started when the father argued the order was meant only for school-related costs, not university.
The mother, with four children from the ongoing marriage, turned to the High Court after the father refused to settle fees owed to the University of Cape Town for their daughter, who was already studying law when the order was made.
Judge Mayosi highlighted that the order clearly required the father to pay “all the children’s educational costs”, adding that the costs “shall include but are not limited to” school fees, hostel fees, tuition, and extracurriculars.
How the court read educational costs
The father leaned on the ejusdem generis principle, saying that since the examples all related to school, the order should be read as excluding university. The court disagreed.
Judge Mayosi found that the words “include but are not limited to” meant the list was open-ended. The court observed, “To apply the ejusdem generis principle in those circumstances is to read the phrase ‘include but is not limited to’ as if it stated ‘include only’, which is the inverse of what the words say.”
Judge Mayosi also applied the approach from Natal Joint Municipal Pension Fund v Endumeni Municipality, where courts must interpret documents by considering wording, context, and purpose together.
The court pointed out that the daughter was already in her second year at university when the order was made and that the father had previously paid her fees.
Why leaving out university would be unfair
The judgment noted the mother had deliberately left educational costs out of her maintenance budget, because these were to be paid straight by the father under a separate clause.
The court said that making the mother cover university fees from routine maintenance would undermine the order and leave the family short of everyday needs.
Judge Mayosi stated, “The respondent’s interpretation that the daughter’s educational expenses are excluded from the ambit of the paragraph cannot be reconciled with the express wording of ‘all the children’s educational costs’.”
The judgment added that leaving out tertiary education would lead to “an insensible outcome” and harm the daughter’s future, since unpaid fees could block her from registering or seeing results.
In the end, the court ruled that the father’s obligations do include university costs for all the children and ordered him to pay the legal costs as well.
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