Hierdie bydrae poog om die siening van regter Binns-Ward in ’n referaat wat gedurende 2022 gelewer is, waarin hy ageer dat geen Suid-Afrikaanse hof tot dusver die trustsluier vir doeleindes van die vermoënsregtelike gevolge van egskeiding gelig het nie, te beoordeel. Daar word aan die hand gedoen dat alhoewel die korrekte uitleg van die toonaangewende uitspraak in Badenhorst v Badenhorst (2006 2 SA 255 (HHA)) deur ons howe steeds onseker is, drie gevolgtrekkings bereik kan word wat lynreg indruis teenoor dié van regter Binns-Ward. Die eerste is dat die Badenhorst-uitspraak – wat oor ’n herverdeling-van-bates-bevel ingevolge artikel 7 van die Wet op Egskeiding 70 van 1979 gehandel het – wel ’n lig van die trustsluier behels het, na aanleiding van die uitoefening van ’n gemeenregtelike bevoegdheid wat onafhanklik staan van enige diskresie wat moontlik ingevolge die Wet op Egskeiding of die Wet op Huweliksgoedere 88 van 1984 uitgeoefen mag word. In die Badenhorst-saak is dit bewerkstellig deur die appellant se voldoening aan die sogenaamde “beheer-toets”, ingevolge waarvan aangetoon is dat die respondent se misbruik van die trustvorm behels het dat sy persoonlike boedel onderwaardeer is. Voldoening aan hierdie toets was egter nie genoeg om die appellant toe te laat om in die respondent se (herwaardeerde) boedel te deel nie; dit kon slegs gebeur indien die toepassing van subartikels 7(4) en (5) ’n verband (nexus) geskep het tussen die uitoefening van die gemeenregtelike bevoegdheid en bateverdeling ingevolge die tersaaklike huweliksgoederestelsel (algehele skeiding van goedere). Tweedens is die remedie wat aan die appellant voorsien is inderdaad ’n remedie vir die misbruik van die trustvorm, in die sin dat daar gepoog is om ’n verpligting wat aan die appellant by egskeiding verskuldig is (te wete die moontlikheid van ’n herverdelingsbevel ingevolge subartikel 7(3) van die Wet op Egskeiding) te omseil. Hierdie remedie behels ’n “beperkte beskouingsbevel” ingevolge waarvan ’n gade se persoonlike aanspreeklikheid bepaal word deur die trustbates in ag te neem sonder dat beslag gelê mag word op daardie bates. Hierdie persoonlike aanspreeklikheid het behels dat die waarde van die trustbates toegevoeg is tot die respondent se boedel vir doeleindes van die herverdelingsbevel soos deur die appellant aangevra. Hierdie gevolgtrekking strook met die beginsels wat ek aanvoer toegepas behoort te word gegewe die genuanseerde konteks van trustmisbruik in die egskeidingsverband en die eiesoortige aard van die regsverpligting wat gepoog is omseil te word. Derdens word, na aanleiding hiervan, die gevolgtrekking bereik dat die “beheer-toets” in die Badenhorst-saak inderdaad – soos tereg bevind is in PAF v SCF (2022 6 SA 162 (HHA)) – toepassing behoort te geniet waar, onder andere, die aanwasbedeling ter sprake is. Voorts word aan die hand gedoen dat regter Binns-Ward se onderskrywing van die uitspraak in MJK v IIK (2023 2 SA 158 (HHA)) ter onderskraging van sy standpunte onoortuigend is, weens die inherente tekortkominge van daardie hof se ratio decidendi.

In this note, I argue that PAF v SCF 2022 (6) SA 162 (SCA) is a groundbreaking judgment for curbing the abuse of the trust form by spouses who are married out of community of property and who engage in unscrupulous ‘divorce planning’ aimed at manipulating their personal estate values for the purposes of dividing matrimonial property at divorce. PAF not only removes several uncertainties regarding our courts’ ability to pierce the veneer of an abused trust but also broadens our conventional understanding of what trust-form abuse entails in the divorce setting, particularly by virtue of its engagement with the SCA’s earlier (prescient) judgment in Badenhorst v Badenhorst 2006 (2) SA 255 (SCA). In the process, I argue that there is a need to reconsider the test formulated in REM v VM 2017 (3) SA 371 (SCA) for taking the asset value of an alter-ego trust into account for accrual claims at divorce. I further assert that the new paradigm PAF ushers in requires formulating a consolidated test that takes into account this reconsideration, as well as the novel factual matrix in PAF. I conclude that this consolidated test is not only capable of being applied in the context of accrual liability, but also where a spouse is eligible to seek a redistribution order in terms of s 7 of the Divorce Act.

Die Wysigingswet op Algemene Wette (Teengeldwassery en Bekamping van Terrorismefinansiering) 22 van 2022 is op 29 Desember 2022 bekragtig. Dié wet wysig, met 1 April 2023 as die inwerkingtredingsdatum van al hierdie wysigings, die Wet op die Beheer oor Trustgoed 57 van 1988 in verskeie opsigte. In hierdie bydrae neem ons twee wysigings onder die loep, naamlik die invoeging van ’n definisie van “uiteindelik geregtigde” (“beneficial owner”) in artikel 1 van Wet 57 van 1988 asook die vaslegging van die idee van “uiteindelike geregtigheid” (“beneficial ownership”) in artikel 11A van daardie wet. Ons voer aan dat beide toevoegings onvanpas is in die Suid-Afrikaanse trustreg aangesien dit nie strook met meerdere van die grondbeginsels van die Suid-Afrikaanse trustreg nie. Ons wys in die besonder daarop dat die wetgewer se gebruik van “uiteindelik geregtigde” en “uiteindelike geregtigheid”: (i) onder inhoudelike onsekerheid gebuk gaan; (ii) nie strook met sommige van Wet 57 van 1988 se bepalings nie, by uitstek die definisie van “trust” in artikel 1 en ’n trustee se sorgplig ingevolge artikel 9; (iii) oënskynlik berus op ’n mistasting oor die regsaard van ’n trust asook die aanvaarde regsbeginsels rakende die misbruik van die trustvorm en skyntrusts en (iv) die gevaar inhou van die voortydige verkryging van regte deur trustbegunstigdes. Ons argumenteer derhalwe dat die wetgewer se gebruik van “uiteindelik geregtigde” en “uiteindelike geregtigheid” in die wysigingswet en Wet 57 van 1988 teoretiese en praktiese onsekerhede skep wat nie alleen die begripsmatige onderbou en samehang van die Suid-Afrikaanse trustreg skaad nie, maar ook dermate uit pas is met sommige van die bestaande wet se bepalings dat hierdie wysigings bykans onmoontlike verpligtinge ten opsigte van die insameling, vaslegging en verslagdoening van inligting (ter nakoming van die – weliswaar prysenswaardige – oogmerke van die wysigingswet) op trustees plaas. Ten einde hierdie kwessies aan te spreek, doen ons ’n alternatiewe – en onses insiens werkbare – wetsbepaling aan die hand wat, alhoewel dit grootliks op die bestaande bewoording van die tersake bepalings van die wysigingswet gegrond is, wegdoen met “uiteindelik geregtigde” en “uiteindelike geregtigheid” terwyl dit steeds uitvoering aan die oogmerke van die wysigingswet gee. Die voorgestelde wetsbepaling spreek in die besonder die problematiek aan met betrekking tot die besit van of doelmatige beheer oor trustbates – wat sentraal tot die idee van ’n “uiteindelik geregtigde” staan. Dit beperk die voorskrifte oor die besit van of doelmatige beheer oor trustbates tot gevalle waarin trustees sinvolle uitvoering aan die tersake wetsbepaling kan gee.

This chapter explores the challenges and changing practices of teaching family law in a diverse society where many students are un(der)prepared for tertiary studies, and where the notion of "transformative constitutionalism" drives constant change both in the content of the field (the "substance"), as well as curriculum design and teaching, learning and assessment priorities and methods (the "form"). As such, the chapter first considers the broader post-1994 evolution of substantive family law from a heritage once dominated by colonial common law towards a more inclusive, increasingly decolonised, human-rights-centred and uniquely South African body of law. This is followed by a consideration of the teaching and assessment of family law at the author's university, against the background of Quinot's "transformative legal education" (TLE) theoretical framework, as further shaped, first, by the key "graduate attributes" identified by the national Council on Higher Education (CHE) during its 2016 review of the various Bachelor of Laws (LLB) programmes offered at all South African universities, and second by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although it is trite that five essentialia are prescribed for valid trust formation, the possibility of a court holding a ‘trust’ to be a ‘sham’ due to a finding that a trust founder never truly intended to create the trust is a relatively new feature of South African trust-law jurisprudence. While early attempts to define and characterise the sham trust concept may justifiably be criticised for conflating it with a situation where it is necessary to ‘pierce the veneer’ of a validly created trust, pioneering legal scholarship has contributed to an authoritative body of case law in which its theoretical underpinnings have become crystallised. However, only two (unreported) judgments have thus far dealt with the sham trust in practice. This article uses the latest of these (the unreported decision in Humansdorp Co-op v Wait) as a platform from which to interrogate the intention requirement and its inter-relationship with the requirement of sufficient trustee independence. The authority relied on in Wait is also utilised to develop conceptual linkages between the sham scenario, the ‘control test’ that is used in the veneer-piercing context, and the ‘core idea’ of the trust as articulated in the seminal judgment of Land and Agricultural Bank of SA v Parker 2005 (2) SA 77 (SCA). The article concludes that although Wait is not a model of clarity, it is a ground-breaking judgment that has elevated the ‘sham trust’ concept from theoretical possibility to practical reality.

Although it is an entrenched principle of company law that the abuse of corporate personality may require the “corporate veil” of a company to be “pierced”, this possibility has only recently become a feature of South African trust law. While this is a salutary development in theory, the application and practical usefulness of this remedy remain shrouded in uncertainty. A particularly acute manifestation hereof arises where it is argued that (the value of) trust property should be considered for the purposes of dividing matrimonial property at divorce. By drawing on the established principles of “piercing” in the company context and analysing relevant case law, Part One of this article concludes that the prevailing position in respect of trusts neither accords with the principles of proper trust administration nor gives effect to the legal obligations imposed on divorcing spouses by matrimonial property law. More specifically, it is argued that, while piercing the trust veil is a power that is derived from common law (as opposed to legislation), the actual exercising of this power in a divorce context is dependent on a nexus provided by the matrimonial property regime in question. From this platform, Part Two of this article will provide perspectives on how the property of an abused trust should be dealt with in divorces involving the three major matrimonial property regimes that are recognised by South African family law. In addition, it will be argued that potential litigation based on these contentions should contribute towards rectifying the unsatisfactory legal position that prevails.

The wide powers of judicial review granted to South African courts by the Constitution have, predictably and correctly, led to the judicial broadening of the ambit of persons who qualify as a surviving spouse for the purposes of the Intestate Succession Act, 1987 (the ISA). Surviving heterosexual life partners, however, remain excluded. In an earlier publication, I concluded that this exclusion violates the rights to equality and dignity of these partners. Building hereon, this article considers the fashioning of the appropriate constitutional remedy. In doing so, it identifies the prevailing positive law as an example of what I term judicially generated residual discrimination. This occurs when a new form of marginalisation arises in our constitutional democracy as the (presumably unintended) by-product of the judicial broadening of a (pre-1994) piece of legislation. Where a court finds this to constitute unfair discrimination, the nature, scope and effective date of remedial action may be complicated by the very fact that the unfair discrimination has arisen as a result of earlier, but post-Constitutional, case law. This is particularly so in the case of the ISA, because standing reading-in orders granted by the Constitutional Court - that have never been addressed by the legislature - need to be tinkered with by the court. This requires the doctrine of precedent to be considered in a context in which it has never been considered before in South Africa (or in comparable jurisdictions such as the United States and Canada). The article proffers a remedy that addresses these issues while conforming to the constitutional demands of providing appropriate relief by means of an order that is just and equitable. In this manner, it also provides perspectives that may be taken into account by courts that may have to adjudicate upon similar instances of judicially generated residual discrimination in future.

This article considers the ambit of the suggestion made by Cameron JA in paragraph 35 of the landmark judgment in Land and Agricultural Bank of South Africa v Parker (subsequently elevated to a legal requirement by Circular 2 of 2005 issued by the Acting Chief Master then in office) to the effect that an 'independent trustee' should be appointed to certain trusts in order to ensure 'that an adequate separation of control from enjoyment is maintained ...''. In particular, the interpretation of what may be termed the 'independent trustee requirement' is considered. I conclude that a literal interpretation of paragraph 35 of Parker does not square with the rationale and 'legal logic' behind the imposition of this requirement. A broader interpretation is therefore required in order to achieve this. Building on this conclusion, I investigate the issue whether the requirement should be imposed on non-formalised life partnerships. In this regard I consider the current legal position as well as the position that will obtain if the draft Domestic Partnerships Bill, 2008 were to be enacted. The article concludes with suggestions as to how my findings may be implemented by the Master.

Two judgments in the same division of the High Court have resurrected the issue as to the extension of certain rights and benefits of marriage to unmarried heterosexual domestic or life partners – an issue thought to have been settled by the Constitutional Court’s majority judgment in Volks NO v. Robinson 2005 5 BCLR 446 (CC). Both cases involved the question whether the common-law dependent’s action for loss of support in consequence of the wrongful and culpable killing of a breadwinner (“the dependant’s action”) was capable of being developed to permit the surviving partner to such a partnership to be compensated for the death of her partner that had been caused by the negligence of an insured driver.

This contribution re-examines the validity of the dual purpose approach to the interpretation of section 6(1) of the Trust Property Control Act 57 of 1988, which approach was first proffered in 2007 and holds that the provision was enacted with a view to protecting both the public interest as well as the interests of the trust beneficiaries and that it should be interpreted accordingly. Recent academic criticism of this approach is considered, and, after having done so, the findings of the most authoritative decision to deal with section 6(1) thus far - namely the Supreme Court of Appeal's judgment in Lupacchini v Minister of Safety and Security 2010 6 SA 457 (SCA) - are evaluated in the light of the re-examination thus conducted. In particular, through holding that section 6(1) is a directory provision that requires substantive compliance, this contribution (i) re-emphasises the validity of the dual purpose approach as a means of ratifying contracts entered into by unauthorised trustees, and (ii) concludes that the application of the approach shows that unauthorised trustees who satisfy a capacity-defining condition imposed by the trust deed in terms of which they were appointed should be permitted to sue or be sued provided that they have a sufficient interest in the litigation.

In 2008 the South African legislature published a draft Domestic Partnerships Bill aimed at regulating the position of persons who live together outside of a legal marriage or civil union. The Bill makes provision for both registered and unregistered domestic partnerships. While the former involves a formal registration procedure, the latter allows either partner to an unregistered partnership that satisfies certain threshold criteria to 'opt-in' to the protection provided by the Bill by approaching a competent court, after the termination of the union, for certain relief. This article considers the salient features of, and interplay between, the partnership options under the Bill with a view to ascertaining whether the common law putative marriage doctrine is capable of being extended in order to assist partners who are of the bona fide belief that their partnerships will be recognised and protected under the Bill, while this is in reality not the case. The conclusion is reached that while the doctrine may in principle be extended to invalid 'registered' domestic partnerships, a refusal to extend the doctrine to 'unregistered' domestic partnerships will pass constitutional muster. This notwithstanding, the doctrine as currently applied in the context of the law of marriage is in need of being developed in order to cater for polygamous civil 'marriages', and this has important implications for applying the doctrine to domestic partnerships. The article also concludes that the Bill itself requires certain amendments, and that the applicability of the putative marriage doctrine depends on whether or not these amendments are made.

As it stands, South African family law currently holds that the Marriage Act 25 of 1961 applies exclusively to the solemnisation of heterosexual civil marriages while same-sex couples have no choice but to formalise their relationships in terms of the Civil Union Act 17 of 2006. In addition, the legal position is complicated by the fact that the latter Act not only allows both heterosexual and homosexual couples to conclude a civil union, but also provides that a civil union may take the form of either a marriage or a civil partnership, both of which enjoy the same legal recognition as, and give rise to the same legal consequences, as a civil marriage under the Marriage Act.In January 2008, a draft Domestic Partnerships Bill saw the light of day, the potential enactment of which casts significant doubt as to whether the prevailing framework should be retained. With this potential development in mind, this paper considers the desirability of maintaining the "separate but equal" status quo by: (a) comparing the South African Law Reform Commission's pre-Civil Union Act proposals with the approach eventually adopted by the legislature; (b) comparing and contrasting the post-Civil Union Act position in South Africa with that of an established and well-ordered jurisdiction such as the Netherlands and, in the light hereof, considering the cases for and against repealing the Civil Union Act; and (c) by considering the desirability and practicality of the civil partnership's potential co-existence with the Domestic Partnerships Bill (as modified in accordance with a recent study). A proposal is made that could provide a less complex and better streamlined family law dispensation in South Africa.

The article considers certain critical failings of the so-called "choice argument" (that is the view that, by opting to cohabit in a life partnership rather than marry or enter into a civil partnership, a life partner is not entitled to the legal benefits provided by matrimonial [property] law) as it was applied to opposite-sex life partnerships by the majority of the Constitutional Court in Volks v Robinson.1 On the basis of Canadian jurisprudence, a "contextualised choice model" is developed that distinguishes between need-based claims and those involving property disputes, and holds that the "choice argument" could at best be relevant regarding the latter category of claims, while the existence of a reciprocal duty of support is sine qua non for any need-based claim to succeed. These findings are applied to registered and unregistered domestic partnerships under the draft Domestic Partnerships Bill, 2008, with the aim of suggesting certain amendments to the Bill in the hope of ensuring a more consistent and principled legal position once the Bill is enacted.

This article examines the application of the putative spouse doctrine in South Africa in the light of a recent judgement in which it was held that the second ‘wife’ to a bigamous civil ‘marriage’ in community of property was not entitled to any share of the estate at the death of her ‘husband’ despite the fact that she was ostensibly of the bona fide belief that she had been his only wife and that her marriage had been valid. On the basis of a comparative survey involving American and French law, the article concludes that the legal position created in South Africa by the precedent in question is untenable and in need of being developed in order to cater for future similar situations.