Welcome to Miltons Matsemela - The Conveyancers
01 Apr 2020

Building Plans – Your Neighbour Builds Without Plans – Can You Get a Demolition Order?

“The primary remedy therefore is an order for removal of the structure” (extract from the judgment below)

“Neighbour problems” are as old as civilization itself, and an all-too-common cause of conflict is construction work. When your neighbour’s new house/extension/outbuilding impinges on your sea view, or steals your light, or invades your privacy, or encroaches on your property, you are going to be upset. And you will want to know what you can do about stopping the offending work as soon as possible.

A recent High Court decision confirms how strong your position will be if you can show that your neighbour has proceeded without the necessary municipal approvals. We discuss the facts of the case (a 16 year long saga over an encroaching garage), and the law behind the Court’s decision to order demolition.

What can you do if your neighbour has started (or finished) building without the necessary municipal approvals?

In a nutshell, our courts will very probably assist you with a demolition order, as a recent High Court decision around a long-running property encroachment illustrates.

The 16 year saga of an encroaching garage

  • A couple, owners of a property next to a church Mission, expanded their house in 2004 by building a brick garage.
  • They thought they were building on their own land, having in 1998 built a wall along what they genuinely – but mistakenly – thought was the correct boundary between the two properties.
  • As we shall see below, their fatal mistake was building their garage without municipal plans or approval.
  • In fact the garage was inadvertently built on Mission land, but the Mission was having none of that –
    • First in 2012 it asked the couple – and another neighbour in the same position – to demolish.
    • When the couple refused (the other neighbour complied) the Mission in 2014 laid criminal charges against them for failing to comply with the relevant Act (the National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act). These charges, for purely technical reasons, failed to stick.
    • On pressed the Mission, this time turning to the local municipality for help in 2016. The municipality duly issued a formal Notice requiring demolition of the garage as it had been erected illegally without plans or permission. The couple simply refused to either receive the Notice or to remove the encroaching garage.
  • Which brings us to the High Court in 2017, with the Mission applying for a demolition order and the couple asking the Court to rather order the Mission to transfer the relevant piece of its land to them against payment of reasonable compensation.

What about alternatives to demolition?

A court deciding a demolition application has “discretion to reach an equitable and reasonable solution in terms of the common law by ordering payment or compensation rather than removal in cases where the cost of removal would be disproportionate to the benefit derived from the removal”.

In this respect said the Court (emphasis supplied) “the encroaching owner’s own conduct plays an important role” and “while one is acutely aware of the financial implications, inconvenience and disruption which the partial demolition will cause the [couple], the upholding of the doctrine of legality, a fundamental component of the rule of law, must inevitably trump such personal considerations.”

Commenting on the couple’s “obstructive behaviour” in this case, and finding that they “are indeed in legal and administrative breach of the law … to allow them to keep the structures where they are, would be to perpetuate the illegality”, the Court ordered the couple to demolish their illegal garage within 90 days.

So if you are the neighbour planning to build…

Whilst the case in question deals with encroachment on another’s land, our courts have applied exactly the same principles to a wide variety of “neighbour dispute” cases – sea view obstructions, failure to observe building lines and the like.

So don’t even think of starting to build without having all necessary municipal plan approvals and permissions in place!

And if you are the objecting neighbour…

The couple in this case put up an argument that the Mission couldn’t demand demolition as it had “acquiesced in their occupation of the relevant land because it did not object when they built the wall on the church ground in 1998, and did not complain when they built the ‘offending’ garage in 2004 or 2005.”

Factually the Mission’s long history of actively objecting to the unlawful construction put an end to that argument, but the longer you delay in objecting and taking action the greater your risk of facing a similar argument. Take immediate action against any neighbour building unlawfully.

01 Apr 2020

Partnership vs Marriage – Beware the “Common Law Marriage” Myth

“In our law cohabitation does not have special legal consequences. Generally the proprietary consequences and rights flowing from a marriage are not available to unmarried couples, regardless of the length of their cohabitation” (extract from judgment below)

Anyone in an informal life partnership arrangement should beware the extremely prevalent – and extremely dangerous – myth of the “common law marriage”.

We discuss the risks of relying on this myth with reference to a recent High Court case in which a couple split after a 22 year relationship. The life partner holding the assets vigorously defended the other partner’s claim to a 50% share, and her struggle to prove the existence of a “universal partnership” shows how difficult it can be to exit such a relationship with even the smallest financial benefit. The claimant in this case was fortunate in eventually being awarded a 30% share (better than nothing, but not 50%!)

Fortunately our law offers you a quick and simple solution…

If you live as a couple, avoid the trap of believing the myth of the “common law marriage”. It’s a very persistent myth, possibly because some other countries do indeed give formal recognition to certain forms of life partnership.

But not in South Africa – there is no such thing in our law as a “common law marriage”. No matter how long you have lived together, if you break up or when one of you dies, neither of you automatically has any of the rights and protections afforded to a couple in a marriage or civil union.

Apart from the personal consequences the financial downsides can be huge, and our courts are all too often faced with sad and bitter disputes which end with one of the partners destitute and homeless after decades of cohabitation.

A recent High Court case highlights the financial dangers…

22 years on, a couple splits

  • For most of 22 years, with only a short early separation, a man and woman “in a romantic relationship” lived as a couple, in a household complete with the woman’s daughter from a previous relationship.
  • They had been jointly involved to one degree or another in a series of business ventures including vegetable farming (on a farm purchased in the man’s name), commercial blasting, a bakery and a packaging business, and what was at stake in the High Court was whether the woman could prove her claim to a 50% share of the resultant assets.
  • The facts were bitterly disputed, with the man adamant that the relationship had been nothing more than co-habitation as lovers. But eventually the Court concluded, on the basis of the facts that it found proved, that “the parties intended to pool their resources for the benefit of a joint estate” and that the woman had accordingly proved the existence of a “universal partnership”.
  • Not however to the 50/50 extent she claimed, and the end result is that at age of 47 and after 22 years she leaves the relationship with only 30% of the net assets. Hard though that may seem, she could easily have been left with nothing, as we shall see below when we look at what our law says about such relationships.

The difficulty of proving a “universal partnership”

The problem in such a case is that you have to prove a lot more than just cohabitation.

You also need to prove the existence of a “universal partnership” and that, as many cases in the past have illustrated, is not easily achieved, not least because the onus is on you to prove your case. You will need to prove all of the following –

  1. Each of the parties brought something into the partnership, or bound themselves to bring something into it, whether it be money or labour skills;
  2. The business had been carried on for the joint benefit of both parties;
  3. The object was to make a profit; and
  4. The partnership contract was legitimate.
    • If, as is common in this sort of situation, you rely on a “tacit” agreement (an unexpressed agreement inferred from your actions as a couple), you have to go further and prove that –
  5. The other person was fully aware of the circumstances connected to the transaction;
  6. The act relied upon was unequivocal; and
  7. The tacit contract does not extend beyond what the parties contemplated.

Again, not easily proved, as “A tacit contract will be interpreted strictly and not extensively, since a contract must be interpreted in favour of the person on whom it is sought to place an obligation.”

The good news – there’s a simple solution…

We have talked above only about the financial consequences of life partnerships which are unregulated by agreement. But formal marriage also provides a range of other legal benefits and protections (such as rights of inheritance and support and other personal aspects of your relationship) which are not automatically available to you.

Fortunately you can avoid all the risk and uncertainty of an unregulated relationship with a quick and simple solution – a formal cohabitation/life partnership agreement.

Just be sure to get it in place early on. Take professional advice (jointly – this is to protect you both!) as soon as you commit to a long-term relationship.

© 2023 Miltons Matsemela. All rights reserved.

Site by Yeabla Digital.

Top