Burden off single parents’ shoulders

Single parents in this country – and especially women – have a daily struggle to survive. It’s a financial battle to keep their children fed, clothed and in school. It’s often a battle they fight alone because South African men have become notorious for ducking their obligations when it comes to maintenance payments.

Yet, bizarrely, up to now, single divorced mothers with children in school have been discriminated against when it comes to school fee concessions.

Education departments have been siding with schools in their insistence that single, divorced parents cannot have their income assessed on its own when it comes to granting fee exemptions to their children. The rules have, up to now, stated that regardless of whether a divorced spouse meets their obligations or not, the income level of the family is calculated on a joint basis.

This insistence on regarding divorced couples as still being a “family unit” – even when one parent has custody of a child – was challenged by Western Cape parent Michelle Saffer, who tried unsuccessfully to get both her child’s school and the provincial education department to assess her financial status on her sole income.

That illogical situation was done away with recently when the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the treatment of Saffer had violated both her statutory and constitutional rights.

It means even more for other single parents because, in future, exemptions cannot be rejected because one parent refuses to pay. Schools still have the legal right to take legal steps to recover the balance of school fees from that other parent which, we believe, is just, because it officially and legally distributes the burden.

This is good news for single parents because it will take one more burden off their shoulders … and it will give their children the same rights and opportunities as everyone else.