Equal rights for unwed partners

The High Court in the Western Cape this week delivered a landmark judgment paving the way for unmarried couples and their married counterparts to be treated equally under the Intestate Succession Act, regardless of their sexual orientation.

This marks the second time the same section of the Act, which lays out how a deceased estate is disposed of in the absence of a will, has been found to be unconstitutional since 2006.

The courts first struck it down for unfairly discriminating against same-sex couples by only providing for a husband or wife to inherit an intestate estate.

Same-sex marriage was not yet legal then and so it was amended to include partners in a “permanent same-sex life partnership”.

But on Monday, Acting Judge Penelope Magona found heterosexual couples in committed relationships who were unmarried, were still left in the lurch.

Magona’s ruling comes on the back of a legal tug of war over a Cape Town businessman’s estate.

In 2014, Anthony Ruch dated Zimbabwean-born Jane Bwanya, then a domestic worker, and four months later she moved in with Ruch. They lived together until he died in 2016.

In his will he had nominated his mother as the sole heir and she had since died. After Bwanya’s claim to his estate was rejected because they were not married, she turned to the court.

Her claim was eventually settled, but the case continued because of the nature of the issues in question. The Legal Resources Centre welcomed the ruling.

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.