A cheating husband who gave his girlfriend R610,000 in an attempt to hide it from his wife in the event that they divorce, has been granted leave to appeal after the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg had ruled against him.
In November 2023, the high court ruled that the husband had failed to prove that the money he had given his ex-girlfriend was a loan.
The ruling was made after HW and his wife JW, approached the high court to compel RS to pay back the money which she had received from her married ex-lover.
The wife was suing RS by virtue of her marriage which is in community of property.
In 2017, during his affair with RS, HW made three withdrawals to the amount of over R850,000 from an investment account.
The money was kept in RS’s bedroom, and after a while he gave her R610,000 and kept the rest to himself.
He said he withdrew the money to prevent his wife from obtaining it in divorce proceedings he was at that time intending to pursue against her.
Following the failure of the affair, HW demanded a repayment of the money, saying it was a loan.
In court, he said the money was a loan, advanced in two payments – one of R210,000 and another of R400,000.
However, RS’ case was that the amount advanced to her was a gift, not a loan. She said this was done to help her pay her business debts, and to free her from business obligations, enabling her to close her business down.
In his ruling, Judge Stuart David James Wilson said the husband made no contemporaneous notes to record the fact of the loan and he told no-one about it.
Moreover, the judge said he had serious doubts about the husband’s credibility and reliability because at the heart of his case, was an act of dishonesty as his intention was to scheme money away from his wife.
In addition, the judge said the fact that the money was deposited into RS’s business account rather than into her personal account doesn’t corroborate HW’s version that he did not intend the money to go anywhere near the business.
In his appeal, HW laid great emphasis on a series of WhatsApp exchanges in which RS consistently failed to deny that the R610,000 was a loan and not a gift.
He also relied on an entry in RS’s company book which recorded the transaction as a loan.
His defence attorney argued that the way RS recorded the entry, was enough to create a reasonable prospect that an appeal court will rule in favour of HW.
Judge Wilson said he still maintains that HW’s self-serving and deceitful conduct hangs over every aspect of the case.
However, he will not reject the reasoning brought by the defence.
Therefore, he granted the appeal and said the matter will be heard in the high court before a full bench of judges.
IOL News