Two former spouses have a tough 60 days to come up with a way of sharing a rental house they built together before their relationship turned sour.
The High Court in Eldoret has given them three options. One is to divide it into two so that each of them has his or her own section. The second is to have one party buy out the other and be the absolute owner, while the third is to sell the property and share the proceeds equally.
They have until October 14, 2025, to make a decision and inform the court.
The two, only identified as Ms GCR and Mr COO in official court reports, once lived as husband and wife, but now they have gone their separate ways.
According to a court case filed in 2021 and which was ruled upon on August 15, the two met in 2014 and started cohabiting. By the time they met, Mr COO had bought a plot in Munyaka Phase II, a residential area in Eldoret.
“The parties herein agreed to develop the land jointly in view of their intention to enter into a marriage,” says a court decision made by Justice Reuben Nyakundi.
On November 1, 2014, they signed an agreement to jointly develop the property. Ms GCR, the court heard, contributed Sh1,042,000 towards the project.
On January 24, 2017, the court further heard, the two were wedded and started living in that house as their matrimonial home. By then, they had one child.
After the wedding, Ms GCR added a further Sh1,011,203 towards the improvement of the property. The improvement included electrical installation, house repairs, plumbing, partitioning, and the perimeter wall, among others.
“The parties herein got into financial distress in the year 2019 and they decided to rent out the above-mentioned property and moved to a cheaper rented house allowing them a surplus from the rental income,” the judgment said. “The marriage between the parties herein hit a rock in the year 2019 and they subsequently separated.”
The two have divorce proceedings ongoing, the court heard, and money continues coming in from the house they rented out.
However, Ms GCR told the court, Mr COO had “started to interfere” with the tenant in the house, which is why she filed the case.
“There is an imminent risk that [Mr COO] will interfere with the ownership, possession, occupation and use of the suit property before the conclusion of the divorce and subsequent division of the property,” Ms GCR told the court.
Ms GCR asked the court to declare the house and land as matrimonial property and that she is entitled to a 50 per cent share of it.
She also asked that Mr COO be barred from selling, transferring, leasing out, charging or in any other way interfering with the ownership, possession, occupation and use of a parcel of land.
The judge declared the property as matrimonial, reasoning that the money she put in and the indirect contributions she made qualified her.
The judge noted that the non-monetary contributions by the wife included her role in maintaining the matrimonial home, caring for their child, and managing the property when it was subsequently rented out for income generation.
“These non-monetary contributions are equally significant and must be factored into any equitable distribution of the matrimonial property,” he said.
However, because the man had bought the land prior to their meeting, the judge said the plot is matrimonial to “the extent of improvements and enhancements made during the subsistence of the marriage between January 2017 and 2019”.
And whereas the judge said it is not automatic that the wife gets a 50 per cent share of matrimonial property upon divorce, he ruled that Ms GCR deserves that half.
“[The] share reflects her direct and indirect contributions during the marriage period, balanced against the respondent’s foundational investment and pre-marital contributions,” the judge said.
“It is further ordered that the parties may, within 60 days of this judgment, explore amicable arrangements for either: (i) physical partition of the property; or (ii) buy-out arrangements whereby one party compensates the other for their determined share, or; (iii) sale of the property and distribution of proceeds according to the shares determined herein,” Justice Nyakundi said.
