Bianca Jade Naidoo, the surviving partner of the late Ricardo ‘Riky Rick‘ Makhado, is in the fight of her life against the Master of the Johannesburg High Court and the Department of Home Affairs.
Is Bianca Naidoo fighting a lost battle?
As reported by Sunday World, Naidoo, who is still mourning the untimely death of the veteran hitmaker and father of their two children, recently filed a petition to be recognised as the executrix (the female version of an executor) of his multi-million-rand estate.
Turns out, according to legal filings seen by the cited publication, Naidoo and Makhado, who’ve been living together since mid-2013, were not legally married. The couple met and fell in love in May of that year, and by June, they’d both been introduced to their respective families.
Naidoo claims she was the financial contributor in the relationship back when Makhado was still carving out a lane for himself in the music scene. He lived at her Bryanston residence with her daughter from a previous marriage.
He drove her car, which she pretty much maintained.
“My financial support for the deceased continued until his career endeavours eventually became a success during the year 2014,” she told the court.
To further support her case, Naidoo added that their families had long recognised them as a married couple. They shared every living day of their lives together, balancing work and life as any married household does.
“Our common intention together with the deceased was to validate our marriage in accordance with civil law. As already stated above, although our families with the deceased are not traditional, they did meet during the course of our relationship to have marriage discussions and our families did approve of our relationship as that of husband and wife,” Naidoo added.
Here’s what legal experts say about her Riky Rick estate case
Riky Rick’s estate currently sits in limbo due to the fact that the rapper had not prepared a will before his untimely death.
Naidoo claims in her court papers that Makhado’s family and business partners are in support of her executrix application.
According to Darren Cohen from Legal & Tax, however, not only will this be an improbable win for Naidoo in her court bid, but the notion that “two people engaged in a romantic relationship who have been living together for many years have what is called ‘a common law marriage’, which means that their relationship has the status of a legal marriage, [is] false with no basis in South African law whatsoever.”
Naidoo’s merits include the fact that Makhado had verbally recognised her as his wife in front of both families, his friends and business partners. She also contends that the couple, in their nine-year cohabitation, were interdependent in every respect.
Makhado gave Naidoo two promise rings, one in 2015 and another in 2020, to cement his intention to marry her. Moreover, Naidoo concedes that both families abandoned lobola negotiations as a gesture of respect for their modern way of life.
However, nowhere in her submission did Naidoo indicate whether she and Makhado had a cohabitation agreement or if they were living together as an engaged couple.
Not only does Naidoo have the odds stacked against her in the Riky Rick estate case, but she is up against the laws scripted in the Intestate Succession Act 81 of 1987 and, according to AED Attorneys, approaching a case of this nature using merits from common law marriage may be futile.
“A partner is only entitled to inherit from the deceased estate if they were legally married, and a cohabitation agreement does not give you the same right. The only way to ensure your life partner inherits from your deceased estate and is legally protected after your death is to draw up a will and include him/her in it,” AED Attorneys write.