Good day, My wife purchased property in ...

Asked by the Customer on 05-01-2015 16:19:55
Question posted in the General Law category relating to Gauteng

Good day,

My wife purchased property in 2006/2007 along with her then boyfriend with a joint loan from Standard Bank. They subsequently broke up but still kept the property. The initial bond repayments were covered by rental income received from the property, and the shortfall for the instalment as well as the levies and other expenses were jointly covered by my wife and her ex (or at least that was the arrangement).

At the end of 2013 a joint decision was taken to dispose of the property as the admin behind it was not very pleasant. At the beginning of 2014 a buyer made an offer on the property which my wife and her ex accepted as it was well above the purchase price and the amount that should have been due on the loan. A couple of weeks later the attorneys dealing with the sale contacted us and asked how we were planning on paying for the shortfall between the selling price and loan amount. This came as a shock to us as our understanding was that the loan should have been much lower than the selling price.

After closer inspection it was found that the partner drew money from the account every month without authorisation and also accessed an additional R120 000 from the account. These were never approved by my wife and she never signed any documentation to this effect. We have received numerous promises from the individual involved that he would remedy the situation, but to date nothing has yet happened to indicate that he would do this.

What legal action can we take against him, and is it possible to split his liability amount from my wife's portion as she never gave authorisation for the additional money to be drawn?

Regards,

Martin

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