Chegutu divorce drama explodes: High Court shuts down man’s desperate grab for power

The High Court of Harare has ordered a divorced man from Chegutu to allow his estranged wife to remain in their former matrimonial home, after he sought to evict her. Judge Catherine Bhachi-Muzawazi granted Sarah Madzura relief, following her appeal against a previous ruling by a magistrates’ court, which had decided in favor of her ex-husband, Onias Gotora, and ordered her eviction.

Madzura and Gotora had been married for 27 years, from 1996 to 2022, under a customary law union, and they had seven children. Their marriage was dissolved two years before the eviction suit, due to irreconcilable differences, including disagreements about parental responsibilities. Despite their separation, Madzura had continued living in the family home located in Hintonville, Chegutu, a property now at the center of this dispute.

During their divorce settlement, which involved the division of property acquired during their marriage, Madzura was awarded a new house constructed for her in her rural hometown. She also received a farmhouse for her exclusive use. The house in Chegutu, however, had been donated to a trust established for the benefit of their three minor children. The property is registered under Gotora’s name through council cession, but no title deeds exist for it. While neither Gotora nor Madzura are beneficiaries of the trust, Gotora is the sole founder and trustee of it.

Madzura did not dispute that Gotora was the legal owner of the property. However, she argued that she should be allowed to continue residing there due to her role as custodian of the minor children, who are the trust’s beneficiaries. She also claimed that the trust had been created to defraud her of her rightful share of the property, which she said was acquired jointly during their marriage.

After a lengthy trial, the magistrates’ court sided with Gotora, ruling that Madzura had not established any legal right to remain in the house and that Gotora had the legal authority to evict her, given that he was the registered owner.

In her appeal to the High Court, Madzura challenged this decision, arguing that the magistrates’ court had erred in granting the eviction order based on Gotora’s name being on the property when the house was actually registered under a trust. She claimed that the court had also overlooked her contribution to the property and the lack of a formal agreement regarding the division of the house.

Justice Bhachi-Muzawazi, in her ruling, acknowledged that the house was indeed part of a trust and that its creation was meant to safeguard the interests of the children. She dismissed Madzura’s argument that the trust was a sham, as there was no evidence supporting this claim. However, she found fault in the lower court’s decision to grant Gotora the eviction rights based solely on his name being on the property’s documents, stating that the trust, not Gotora individually, held those rights.

The judge ruled that while the property was part of the trust, the magistrates’ court had erred in evicting Madzura based on Gotora’s individual ownership claims, as the trust itself should have been the entity to sue for eviction.

 

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