The high price of cohabiting
Written by Millennium on August 3, 2019
GLORIA KANGWA writes
A TWENTY-TWO year old Solwezi woman has taken her boyfriend to court for property sharing after cohabiting with him for over a year.
This is in a case in which Agnes Mwale took the father of her twins Moses Gondwe to court to equally share property they acquired while living together in Solwezi’s Messengers Compund.
Mwale told local court magistrate Davies Kyanuwela sitting with magistrate Maureen Chindumba that she started living in the same house with Gondwe from 2018 until misunderstandings started creeping into their relationship.
She told the court that in October 2018 she became pregnant with twins but later discovered that when she started having stomach pains.
It was discovered that one of the babies was not breathing which led her into having a miscarriage in June 2019 when she was seven months pregnant.
“After my miscarriage we started having problems with my man friend and when I informed my mother about it she took me back to her house,
“I still visited him but it became the situation got out of hand when I noticed he was interested in other ladies and didn’t like me anymore,” she said.
Mwale said all she wanted for now was for the property to be shared equally between of them and go separate ways.
In defence Gondwe told the court that the property in his house was his and no goods were acquired when they were together.
He told the court that all they did was cohabiting but did not get married, adding that no property could therefore be shared.
Bu this angered Mwale who immediately retorted: “Do not play with me Moses, did you have any chairs in your house? Even the TV set and those beddings came from my sister in Lusaka, don’t even forget that Note 4 Infinix phone you are using is mine,”
Magistrate Kyanuwela adjourned the case to a later date.
