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Articles and advice on all things legalCases Review 2018 – 02
Conveyancers’ duty of care Two firms of attorneys were sued by the disgruntled owners of properties on which residential buildings were demolished with the intent that the property be consolidated and that a developer would construct a scheme on the whole and provide...
Property Review 2018 – 02
Levy clearance certificates: I regularly receive invalid levy clearance certificates from well-meaning sectional title body corporate administrators. These, depending on the source, one might be tempted to let pass as these are often quite hard to replace, given quite...
Business Review 2018 – 02
The role of salary in motivation is oft explored; the summation of which is self evident: salary matters much for the poor and much less for the wealthy. Large organisations tend to award across the board salary increases, which, incidentally, is going to be about 3%...
Snippet 2018 – 02
Much was made of the Reserve Bank suspending VBS Mutual Bank, including allegations that this was anti-black et cetera. The latest news holds that a material portion of the deposits at this bank cannot be verified. If this is true the Reserve Bank may well have saved...
Cases Review 2018 – 01
Water discharge on to a lower property. A long-held tenet of our neighbour law is that the owner of a property is obliged to accept the water discharge from that of a property situated above it, provided that the water is not concentrated in that discharge. A recent...
Property Review 2018 – 01
Despite the improving South African economic outlook, our average house price growth has declined fairly dramatically to 2.6% in the 1st quarter, down from 5% in the quarter before. I have little doubt that this is to a large extent attributable to a slowdown in the...
Business Review 2018 – 01
Much was said about the recent signing of power purchase agreements between Eskom and a handful of independent renewable energy power suppliers. One cannot, however, help but wonder whether the push against corruption (think kickbacks on a nuclear plan) and resistance...
Snippet 2018 – 01
MDPs The Legal Practice Act, 2004 will be implemented in earnest on 1 November this year. Section 6(5)(i) thereof provides that its Council, must, at the Minister’s request, advise him on multi-disciplinary (legal) practices (MDPs). MDPs don’t formally exist in South...
The subdivision of agricultural land
The retention of viable agricultural land, of which much is made today, is not a new topic. In 1970, the Subdivision of Agricultural Land Act was introduced to stem the unbridled subdivision of agricultural land into non-viable portions. That Act provides that (with...
The purchase and sale of timber farms
You do not need a professional to sell a farm. In fact, you could sell your farm in a contract written on the back of a cigarette box. If not that much in a hurry, you might wish to consider what follows: As far as the contract itself is required, there are standard...
Taking a Bath: ante-nuptial contracts revisited
Many of our more sophisticated citizens – especially business persons – elect to enter into an ante-nuptial contract (an “ANC”) prior to marriage. The intent usually is to separate their estates; to protect themselves against the insolvency of one of them and to...
Beware of once-off credit agreements
We often lend money or allow a purchaser credit, linked with the payment of interest. Think friendly loans, credit on a purchase of a bicycle, land and the like. Such agreements, however innocent they may be, may well be voidable in future, given a recent amendment of...
Shacking up; not getting knotted
Many couples shack up but don’t tie the knot. Conventional wisdom has it that such relationships are more prevalent today than in the past and, indeed, shacking up would appear to have benefits compared to more formal relationships, especially if the parties are not...
