JINJA.
A Ugandan nurse based in the UK is embroiled in a property wrangle with her former husband after court allocated the biggest share of the wealth to the man following a divorce.
Ms Constance Harriet Kasiisi Karema is contesting orders of the Magistrate’s Court in Mbarara District, which allocated a lion’s share of the family property to her former husband, Dr Nathan Karema. The magistrate’s orders were later upheld by the High Court in Mbarara upon appeal.
Ms Karema has now filed an application for review of the court orders.
In the application before the Mbarara High Court, the 64-year-old contends that she was not called from UK, where she lives, to come to Uganda to testify in the property distribution case after their divorce.
She contends the case was decided without her input and this denied her a fair hearing and her appropriate share of the family wealth.
The application for review of distribution of family property, which was filed through her lawyers Rwaganika, Baku & Company Advocates, is still pending determination before the High Court in Mbarara.
“The trial magistrate denied the applicant (Ms Karema) the right of hearing and subsequently delivered judgment against her on April 23 2013, giving almost all family properties to the respondent and this was illegal and unlawful distribution. The applicant has a good defence to the suit and if the order rejecting the application is not reviewed, a miscarriage of justice will be occasioned to the applicant,” Ms Karema’s application reads in part.
According to the property distribution orders by the Magistrate’s Court in 2013 following dissolution of the couple’s 40-year marriage, the husband was to take over properties in Uganda and his former wife would take the family house in the UK.
However, Ms Karema says the UK family house the court allocated to her, had long been disposed of.
“The family house in UK that I was given by court had already been sold and the court orders made no sense at all.”
According to Ms Karema, the said house was sold at £235,000 (about Shs1 billion) in 2004 and most of the money was channelled to the construction of Mbarara Community Hospital, in which she says her husband has 70 percent shareholding.
“I am now homeless, my children and I are sleeping on the streets of London…” said a teary Karema, at the Monitor Publications offices in Namuwongo, Kampala, last week.
When Saturday Monitor contacted Dr Karema about these allegations, he laughed off the claims by his former wife.
He counter-accused Ms Karema of being the cause of the divorce despite advice from religious leaders not to pursue that option.
“She is the cause of all problems of the divorce. I stayed in Uganda for 10 years and I kept on pleading with her to come back but she refused. I threatened that if she did not come back, I would marry another woman and she thought I was joking. If your wife left you for 10 years, wouldn’t you marry another woman?” Dr Karema asked rhetorically during a telephone interview with this newspaper on Wednesday.
Dr Karema also challenged his former wife to explain where she put her money since she was employed in the UK as a nurse for 10 years.
He alleged that his ex-wife secretly bought a house in the UK, which is different from the other family house which was sold. Dr Karema added that after working for 10 years in Uganda alone, without his former wife’s input, she wanted to have a share of each and every property he had accumulated and that the same was not possible.
awesaka@ug.nationmedia.com
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