A Cape Town mother who was alienated from her two-year-old daughter for almost three months has been granted temporary custody after her husband refused to let her see their child due to her struggles with mental health.
The case unfolded in the Cape Town High Court, where the mother sought primary care of her daughter, pending an investigation by a private social worker to evaluate her fitness as a parent.
The estranged couple met at a rehabilitation centre in 2015 where they both underwent treatment for drug abuse.
They married in 2018 and lived in Cape Town where they both have jobs.
Currently, they are estranged and view their marriage as having irretrievably broken down.
Compounding her distress, she was involved in a car accident in January 2025, prompting her to admit herself into a psychiatric hospital for observation.
During her treatment, she arranged for her daughter to be cared for by the paternal grandmother in Bredasdorp.
The husband is of the view that he has conquered his drug habit while the wife was still struggling. He concluded that she got into the accident because she was on drugs and decided that she was not able to look after the child. The court found no evidence to prove his allegations.
He kept the child with his mother and refused to let the mother have unsupervised contact with their daughter until his conditions were met.
In her application, she explained that she suffered from symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and postpartum depression, attributed to painful complications experienced during childbirth. This resulted in her having mood swings, anxiety, trauma, and depression.
In August 2024, she was diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder with a depressed mood, which was linked to the trauma related to the minor child’s birth experience.
She said her husband preferred prayers and church counselling from people with no qualifications and no professional and expert intervention. She added that he told her that the only medication she needed was the gospel.
Moreover, she said that he controlled every major aspect of her life including her salary. He took her bank card and internet banking code. She rarely had access to her own money.
She could not make any decision on what to spend with her own salary, if she's lucky, she was allowed to buy bread and milk for the house but had to present him with a slip as proof of purchase and had to hand back the card.
In his defence, the husband said he recommended the wife to see a church counsellor because of his strong faith.
He did not deny that he was controlling, he insisted that he had to exercise control over his wife due to her substance and prescription medication abuse.
He argued that he controlled her money because she was bad with her finances.
Judge Daniel Mafeleu Thulare scrutinised the husband’s conduct and pointed out that his financial control was odd as he struggled with his own credit issues.
" This is the man who was himself sequestrated. It was the man who could not take out credit in his own name," he said.
It was further said that he insisted that the wife takes credit in her own name for his and their purchases and did not pay the debts, resulting the wife to go into debt review.
Moreover, judge Thulare said the husband denied the wife enjoyment of her salary, he chose her lingerie, the colour, and denied her freedom of her personal choices.
"The controlling behaviour meant that as a new mother, she was denied the memorable excursion with her newborn, to walk around a shopping mall, to choose and buy food and clothing for her baby. She did not have the painful pleasure of choosing and shopping for groceries for her own household," read the judgment.
Judge Thulare said from the evidence, the husband contributed to the emotional and psychological challenges which the wife suffered and now he wanted to use her situation to his advantage.
"The husband was a law unto himself. The cruelty was not innocent. It was calculated to drive the wife up the psychiatric and psychological hill, for her struggles to get at the top to be used against her in the care of the child," he said.
In addition, the judge said there was no evidence that the mother had ever threatened the life of the child, or that she was a risk to the child, outside the irrelevant speculative opinions of the husband.
"The husband's suppositions and conjecture on alleged medical and drug abuse were simply not sufficient to meet the case that the wife placed before the court."
Judge Thulare awarded the mother interim child custody and ordered the husband to pay the costs of the application.
IOL News
Get your news on the go, click here to join the IOL News WhatsApp channel.