Sterility as a ground for nullifying the marriage: Can Venter and Van Niekerk be reconciled?

Abstract

From text: For a marriage to be valid, all the statutory and common law requirements must be satisfied. In a case where all the requirements of marriage are prima facie present, but one or more of the requirements is defective because of, relevant to this work, material misrepresentation, such marriage is regarded as voidable. With material misrepresentation, the question is whether a person in the position of the innocent party would not have entered into the marriage had s/he been aware of the true nature of things. Of course, not every aspect of misrepresentation can lead to material misrepresentation; the misrepresentation must relate to the material aspect of marriage, and those include serious diseases, impotence and others, but this paper deals only with sterility. Sterility has thus been defined as infertility, that is, “the ability to have sexual intercourse but unable to procreate children”.