Apex court judgment enables opposite-sex life partners to inherit intestate: Constitutional court ruling enables people in opposite-sex life partnerships to inherit from their deceased partner, even if they haven’t left a valid will
Historically the institution of marriage has been considered as the pinnacle of a romantic relationship. The nuclear family is held up as the norm and is attributed value and rights in society, as well as in our legal framework. South Africa’s legislative framework and family law, in particular, was and remains deeply influenced by colonialism and apartheid ideology.
The court applied the intersectional feminist lens that we provided and examined whether indeed Jane Bwanya and others similarly situated to her were being unfairly discriminated against on the basis of their gender, sex and marital status; the court recognised that the Act made provision for the surviving spouse and surviving same-sex partner to claim from the estates of their deceased partners, but failed to extend the same benefit to surviving partners in opposite-sex life partnerships.
Through our work as the Women’s Legal Centre, we are all too aware that simply because our constitution requires equality both as a right not to be infringed and a value by which we all strive to live, traditionally most male partners dictate the nature and evolution of a romantic and intimate relationship. They are the ones in our society who benefit fromrelationships and have little motivation to enter into what are considered to be more binding relationships with the status of a marriage.
Women are not a homogenous group and each individual should be able to make decisions and choices for themselves as individuals and for their families. Women’s positionality in opposite-sex relationships should, therefore, also be understood from the perspective that permanent life partnerships represent the financial, emotional, reproductive and other needs that we have as people. They meet each partner’s desire for love, romance and intimacy in the same manner as those who marry.
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