Maintenance claims pending divorce

Maintenance claims pending divorce

When a divorce is taking a long time to finalise or when one of the spouses is a homemaker with no income, the law provides a mechanism that can be used to assist spouses during a divorce to provide for the interim period until the divorce is finalised. There are rules of the court which  provide an interim measure to help an applicant quickly and with minimal legal costs. In the law, this is called interim relief. The rules can be used for one or more of the following:

interim care or contact with the child;
maintenance for the wife and/or children;
enforcing certain payments, such as for the bond on the matrimonial home, vehicles, school fees, medical aid premiums and even deposits on new accommodation and relocation costs;
interim contribution towards the costs of the divorce and legal fees; and/or
an order for delivery of a car, furniture, etc.