The ManicaPost
Tendai Gukutikwa Weekender Correspondent
A MUTARE man has taken his wife before the civil court accusing her of misusing maintenance money and spending it on her nails and make-up.
Temba Gombakomba complained that all Estella Jiri (his wife) does was spent all day doing manicures and pedicures while failing to feed the children. The couple appeared before Mutare magistrate Miss Nyasha Kuture before whom Gombakomba had made a maintenance discharge application and was accusing his wife of misusing maintenance money.
“Your Worship, I pay $60 maintenance every month, but she only buys groceries worth $12. Half of that will be cabbages and the rest she buys her make-up kits and paints her nails all day.
“She also uses some of the money to buy fuel which she sells illegally. She does not care about the well-being of our children,” claimed Gombakomba. He also accused his wife of defrauding him by forging his signature and buying a phone on credit using his payslip. Gombakomba described his wife as an ungrateful person and a criminal who deserved to be behind bars.
“My wife is a criminal and I have had enough of it. Just recently, she stole my payslip and bank card before forging my signature to buy a phone on credit. I was surprised when the phone company started deducting money from my account. I went there and they told me she was the one who had bought the phone,” he claimed.
Jiri has since been arraigned before the Mutare Magistrates’ Court facing fraud charges over the issue. Gombakomba begged that the maintenance be annulled, claiming that Jiri was not using it to look after the children, but was rather treating the maintenance money as her own salary.
Jiri, however, would not hear of it as she claimed that she was struggling to make ends meet with the $60 that she was currently being paid as maintenance and even asked the court to vary the amount upwards. She claimed that Gombakomba was lying so that he could get the favour of the court. She labelled him stingy.
“Your Worship, he does not come home when he gets his salary. He only comes home five days after he has exhausted his salary.
“If it is possible the money should be varied upwards because $60 is not enough for myself and the children. As we speak, my children have school fees arrears, but he claims to be a responsible father,” she said. Gombakomba vehemently denied that he was in school fees arrears. The court ordered him to collect the receipts from the school.
He said he could only bring them after schools open. Miss Kuture ordered him to continue paying the $60 monthly maintenance for his three children and come back after schools opened with proof that he has been paying the school fees.
