Legal letter that opened a Pandora’s box
I ACKNOWLEDGE your attorney’s letter where you demanded that I pay the sum of R51 239.60 into their bank account or face a warrant of execution instructing the sheriff to attach and remove my movable assets.
My initial response was disbelief that you would take such action considering your current and previous arrears on the children’s maintenance which you still owe.
This is despite several court appearances where you claimed to be unemployed and financially compromised, and when you have failed to pay any school fees for 2020 based on the costs of your newborn baby.
One would assume that your claim for legal costs could easily be offset against what you owe in children’s maintenance or even against your future monthly maintenance payments.
That said, I have rallied my circle of friends and family that have been supporting us through these trying times and none of them have surplus funds to pay your bill of costs.
Furthermore, these individuals would prefer for me to continue using their funds to help us with our monthly bills until I am gainfully employed.
They are also aware that the children were suspended from school in June due to your failure to pay school fees, only to be reinstated at my request pending the legal outcome of several matters at play within both the Maintenance and High Courts.
This has been compounded by your refusal to accept lucrative offers on our jointly owned house that will realise much-needed funds for the children and afford me the means to pay off your claim for legal costs.
I have always shielded the children from all of this as best as possible. But the imminent threat of the sheriff arriving at our home to attach and remove our belongings has forced me to share this state of affairs with them.
This is so they are prepared if the sheriff arrives while they are home, or worse yet, while they are home without me.
So alas, your legal letter seems to be the cursed key that opened a Pandora’s box.
Our daughter initially wanted to pen her own response to you, but then said: “I don’t wish to put that much effort into someone who clearly doesn’t give a s**t about me.”
The irony in all the chaos is that these children already chose not to have contact with you years ago based on reasons totally unrelated to the issue at hand.
They even succeeded in gaining their court order to that effect the last time you tried to force contact with them.
Yet, over the past few days, while dealing with the truth unleashed from a Pandora’s box, their biggest disappointment is with me. They feel I have failed them by always portraying you as a good father who still pays school fees and contributes to a monthly stipend; that I always reprimanded them for saying anything harsh about you and encouraged them to reach out to you some day when they felt the time was right.
They have asked that I stop sugar-coating the harsh reality and realise that the only person protected in all this was you, and not them.
Furthermore, they feel strongly that they are tired of having to explain to people why they prefer not to talk about you, have contact with you, or write your surname on a test script or schoolbook.
They are teenagers and remain dependent on me, so we live in one home. My movable assets are their movable assets – their couch, their bed, their printer, their table, their pots, their spoons, their dinner plates, and the funds I use to support them are theirs and what is theirs is mine.
When the sheriff arrives to remove my property, we will all lose our property. They asked whether they will have the opportunity to choose what the sheriff can take and whether their gifts from other people could also be attached.
In short, the children are not keen to lose their personal artefacts – especially since what we have is what we acquired through much sacrifice as a family after you exited our lives. So, they have suggested that I propose the following to you as fair value against your claim.
They have offered to give you back all the jewellery that you gifted them, which they have always rejected upon presentation.
In their words: “I would rather not accept gifts from someone who makes me feel this anxious and petrified. I am not sure that this is what defines a ‘dad’.”
They also want me to offer you their Segways, phones, iPads and drum kit that you purchased as gifts. In support of their offer and in addition to their proposal, I still have all the jewellery that you gifted me with, including my wedding ring.
I am told that the diamond alone is worth over R20 000. Since we parted ways, I had intended to have these melted and remade as gifts for the girls’ 21st birthdays, but they now have no wish to inherit this, so I am happy to tender them all to you as I don’t wear them either.
Please confirm your availability to receive them at your attorney’s offices as it is the children’s express wish that we hand them over to you in person.
We have decided to publish this letter (under a pseudonym) to highlight the trauma of a messy divorce. | Editor