Welcome to the Legal Advice Office in South Africa

• Family Law
• maintenance to children
• divorce settlement
• financial support to spouse

The answer to this question is not a simple one

At The Legal Advice Office; we receive daily inquiries on a number of issues which affect the daily lives of the people around us.

On Friday we received the following question and query and will answer it in this blog.

“I have been divorced for some years now and have been paying maintenance to my ex-wife and my two children for a five of years; ever since our divorce was finalised in the High Court in Cape Town in 2013. My eldest son has now finished school and he wants to go to university. My ex-wife is now insisting that I must contribute to his university studies as part of my maintenance obligations. Surely now that he is an adult and eighteen years old, my responsibility to maintain him will have stopped?”

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• Labour Law
• Unfair Dismissal
• retrenchment
• employee claims
• retrenchment procedure

In this day and age and in the light of very difficult economic realities in the RSA, a lot of employees have to be aware that companies are struggling financially.

Even large blue chip companies are being effected and have to constantly plan ahead in order to retain a competitive edge over their competition.
Just this last week, Standard Bank has announced that it intends to close 91 branches and that this will affect about 1200 employees. A short while ago,

Absa announced a restructuring plan which will result in the possible retrenchment of about 800 employees.
I was recently asked to do a piece on retrenchment. 

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• Property Law
• immovabe property
• National Credit Act
• Sale of property
• Instalment Sale agreement

Sellers contemplating an instalment sale agreement containing interest charges should take careful note of the steps to be taken before concluding the sale agreement

The National Credit Act No 34 of 2005 has some wide-ranging applicability on immovable property instalment sale agreements.

Here is a case study to illustrate and understand the implications of The National Credit Act  based on an inquiry our office received this last week :

“I own a property in Muizenberg, Cape Town. A buyer is interested in buying my flat. Her bank is not prepared to give her a loan because she is paying off a few personal loans, but she is prepared to enter into an instalment sale agreement to pay the purchase price in instalments over a period of time, much like a rental. I like the idea of at least getting a monthly income, but I am worried whether I can do this and charge interest on the instalments, particularly as it will take a few years for her to pay the price in full?”

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