The Runaway Wife

My name is David and I live in Gauteng, South Africa with my two young daughters. I am in my late thirties and the Managing Director of a small but very successful business yet until a year ago I felt like a failure and couldn’t see my way forward in life.

My wife, Janine, had deserted us to go and live in Australia. She left our lovely young daughters of eight and ten years of age in my care, in the family home in Gauteng. She left me, with my stressful business life, to manage a household, the rearing of our daughters and the running of a company. She’d run away so many times before. However, each time was longer and harder for us who were left behind; I was taking major strain.

This was Janine – not concerned with what she was doing to her family: she had a history (developed over the years) of running away and returning. She was emotionally and psychologically unstable – I called it flaky. She didn’t want to give up what she had, but, she didn’t want to have the responsibility that was attached to being a wife and a mother.

Something I could never understand was her attitude. I built up the business; I provided the home and paid all the expenses. She never worked.  I clothed the family, fed them, paid the medicals, the entertainment, the schooling, the food, the phone bills, the petrol and all the holidays. I bought the cars and all the household contents. All I ever asked of her; all she ever had to do, was be a wife to me and a mother to our daughters. Strangely, this was just too much for her and she kept running away.

After many years of this ‘off again, on again’ relationship, I decided to call it a day. One morning I woke up as depressed as hell and realised that I’d reached the end of my rope. My morale and even that of our daughters, had taken a serious beating and I wasn’t going to let it continue. For years I’d borne all the responsibilities of a being single parent without enjoying any of the advantages. After all, I was a married man both in the eyes of the community and also in the business world. However, I wasn’t a man of stone and I was living as though I belonged in a Monastery.

You must understand I didn’t arrive at this decision easily but I’d lost the love and respect I’d once had for Janine.  I think I mostly felt sorry for her because she couldn’t get a grip on life. I kept asking myself if I could have done more to keep Janine at home and to save the marriage, but there was nothing I could have done better – short of keep her a prisoner. So, I thought, if I don’t act now, I’ll still be like this in ten years time. I visited Martin Vermaak Attorneys’  team of Specialist Divorce and Family Law Lawyers and this was a tricky situation.

At Martin Vermaak Attorneys. I explained my circumstances to one of the Attorneys and asked how the law would deal with my situation because I thought I had to go and live in Australia to get a divorce and I didn’t know about the legal system there. I also asked if I could leave our daughters in the care of my parents whilst I was away or if I had to take them with me. The Attending Attorney asked me why on earth I was going to Australia if I was so reluctant about it. I told him I would rather not go but was under the impression that I had to file for Divorce in the country in which my wife was residing.

This was not the case and the answer to my dilemma was an Edictal Citation. He explained the whole process to me in great detail and I must say, I was so relieved that I could stay here and get on with life and business as usual, that I really didn’t concern myself with the legal aspects. I gave Martin Vermaak Attorneys on the spot instruction to proceed.

What I do remember is that they went to High Court to get this Edictal Citation – I think it’s a formality requesting the Court’s permission to proceed with your Divorce.  Once the Court had granted that, my Attorneys drafted some documents and instructed some Attorneys in Australia – they called them Correspondent Attorneys – to have the documents served on my wife. She was given about a month to sign the papers and then the original signed documents were couriered back to my Attorneys here. After that we proceeded with a fairly normal divorce.

It did cost extra - what with the Courier Service and the Correspondent Attorneys’ fees and the Sheriff’s fees in Australia - but it worked out a great deal cheaper than what it would have cost me to go and live in Australia and get the divorce done there. Plus, although it took longer with all the overseas back and forth story, I was still hands on at my business so I was still making money and using the time wisely. The best thing of all is that my daughters’ lives had not been disrupted.

Now I’m a free man, my daughters are growing up safely and happily and I’ve met someone – time will tell. If only I’d know about Edictal Citation I might have reached this point years ago.