NO MORE FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS?

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Cohabitation is about to take a whole new meaning if a proposed Matrimonial Property Bill of 2017 gets to become law.

It’s a case of good news and bad news for either party depending on which side of this law slaps all the current ‘friends with benefits.’
The upside of it is the right it gives to bomasihlalisane (live-in lovers) to lay claim to their share of material or financial input into a relationship should one party opt out.

In its current draft form, the proposed legislation comes across as a pre-marriage benefit law that could easily devalue the sanctity of marriage. Why get married if you can cohabit ‘in community of property.’
It comes with a jail term for literally failing to give back what one put into the relationship; more like a blesser’s right to reclaim all sponsorships should a blessee walk out.

Prisons had better expand their walls and lawyers ready themselves, for they are about to get very busy should this law come to pass, no doubt.
Worth noting though is that while government is tightening the love-screws with live-in lovers, it seems to be loosening the nuts and bolts for married couples with new amendments to the 1964 Marriage Act that will effectively increase the number of grounds for divorce.

Once passed into law, married couples will no longer be limited to divorce based on malicious desertion and adultery. Now couples can split if one of them decides to assume a different religion. The other grounds proposed are sexual perversion and cruelty, whether mental or physical, in the hands of their better half.

This, we believe, is aimed at releasing partners from the bondage of abuse.
We acknowledge the fact that the number of brutal murders in this country arising from bitter relationship disputes is a serious cause for concern, but is this the answer to curbing all the crimes of passion?
Only love will tell.

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