Page:Fourie v Minister of Home Affairs (SCA).djvu/89

Rh Act was passed Parliament passed the Domicile Act 3 of 1992, which conferred on all persons over the age of eighteen years the capacity to acquire a domicile of choice and thereby abolished the common law rule that a wife automatically acquired and followed her husband's domicile. The Guardianship Act 192 of 1993 repealed the common law rule that a father is the natural guardian of his legitimate children and replaced it by the rule that parents share guardianship in respect of their legitimate children.

As far as I am aware the only common law rule for the application of which it is necessary to be able to identify the husband which still forms part of our matrimonial law is the rule which provides that the proprietary consequences of a marriage are determined, where the prospective spouses have different domiciles, by the law of the domicile of the husband at the time of the marriage. (This rule was established by the decision of this Court in Frankel's Estate v The Master ). All other rules apply equally to both spouses. Thus spouses owe each other a reciprocal duty of support and either spouse can be ordered to support the other or, where a redistribution order is competent, to transfer assets to the other on divorce.