Customary Marriage: What You Need to Know

The Recognition of Customary Marriages Act (RCMA), which came into effect in November 2000, for the first time allowed customary marriages to be recognised as legally binding unions with the same status as civil unions. The Act addressed issues of equality in the marriage, and abolished the concept of marital power. In South Africa, you can now choose whether you want to get married in either a civil union or a customary marriage - the same legal rights will apply to both.

However, if you choose to enter a customary marriage, there are still some things you need to know, says Advocate Sankie Morata, Chief Operations Officer at Sanlam Personal Finance: Fiduciary Services. The most important of these is that, unless you have drawn up an antenuptial contract, all customary marriages are seen to be in community of property, which means that all assets (as well as any debt) belong to all the spouses equally.

'In the case of our wealthy businessman, because all his wives were married in community of property to the deceased, we needed everyone's consent to sell off certain farms he possessed, so you can imagine the complications arising from this and other financial arrangements which needed to completed,' says Morata.