Sterility as a ground for nullifying the marriage : can Venter and Van Niekerk be reconciled? : case note
For a marriage to be valid, all statutory and common law requirements must be satisfied. In a case where all requirements of marriage are prima facie present, but one or more of requirements is defective because of, relevant to this work, material misrepresentation, such marriage is regarded as voidable. With material misrepresentation, question is whether a person in position of innocent party would not have entered into marriage had s/he been aware of true nature of things. Of course, not every aspect of misrepresentation can lead to material misrepresentation; misrepresentation must relate to 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.