Africa-Press – South-Africa. A court interpreter at the Thohoyandou Magistrate’s Court in Limpopo has accused a senior magistrate at the same court of not paying maintenance for their underaged child.
The 40-year-old woman dragged the magistrate to court nine years ago to force him to pay maintenance. However, the matter is still playing out in court.
In court papers, the woman claimed she was in a romantic relationship with the magistrate in 2011, and their child was born in 2012. The magistrate, however, denied he was the father.
When the child was born, the mother was still married to another man and later dated the magistrate’s son, the magistrate said. He also said that after he was reported to the maintenance court, he requested the child’s birth certificate, which was only given to him in February this year.
“The said child was born within the said wedlock. I must further mention that around 2012 the [mother] had a romantic relationship with my son, and the two frequently differed, quarrelled and became physical with each other to an extent that the [mother] even reported two assaults cases at Louis Trichardt police station, in which she claimed that my son assaulted her.”
According to the magistrate:
The magistrate said he asked for the child’s birth certificate because he wanted to see who had been named as the father on the document because “my son was not sufficient and therefore I was dragged into the maintenance as [his father]”.
He added that from 2015 until November 2022, the woman refused to provide him with the birth certificate. She then abandoned the maintenance matter and revived it in November 2022, he said.
But, according to the woman, she started dating the magistrate’s son in 2014, not in 2012, as alleged by the magistrate. She told News24 her husband knew “from day one that the child was not his”.
“He (the magistrate) maintained the child for about a year or two after she was born and stopped out of nowhere. He must just go for a paternity test, which will resolve everything,” she said.
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