dispute
Ann Eveleth
The controversial Johannesburg lawyer who championed the rights of fathers in the Lawrie Frasier adoption saga was last month ordered by the Cape High Court to return his nine-year-old child to his estranged wife in Cape Town.
Peter Soller was ordered to return his son to Nancy Soller on December 28 after he failed to return the child on the agreed return date – four days earlier – following his holiday custody time.
Soller’s access rights have now been restricted pending a February 4 court appearance. He has also fallen behind in maintenance payments and failed to pay his son’s school fees.
Soller failed to appear in court last week. He was expected to explain why he should not be found in contempt of court for breaching a May 1995 order stipulating the custody arrangements.
His lawyer told Judge Dennis Davis that Soller could not appear owing to a detached retina. Judge Davis ordered him to supply an affidavit from an ophthalmologist supporting this claim on the following day, but he failed to do so.
Soller said he never received the court order. “I was on holiday at a lagoon in the Eastern Cape. My cellphone wasn’t working. A friend [Parents Support Group representative Mark Duevall] picked up my message and phoned the court registrar. He received the court papers, but not the court order,” he said.
Soller returned his son to Cape Town on January 6. He claimed he did not return the child on time because “the child did not want to go home to his mother. He has never had a month’s holiday with his father and he didn’t want to go back before the end of the holidays.”
Soller said he had intended taking the child for a psychological evaluation in Johannesburg, but this had not happened because Nancy Soller intervened.
However, according to Nancy Soller’s affidavit, this was at least the fourth time Peter Soller has violated the access agreement. “In the period since our divorce [in February 1994], there has hardly been an occasion when [he] has exercised access to [the child] without incident.”
Nancy Soller claims in her affidavit that the non-payment of school fees and maintenance are also repeat problems. She said that Peter Soller only paid school fees in 1997 “after a writ was issued. Maintenance in respect of December 1997 was only paid after a writ was issued and a charge laid against [him].”
Soller did not deny he had failed to pay school fees and maintenance in recent months, but blamed this on his son’s schoolteachers and mother. “My son’s teachers won’t speak to me. Nancy and her lawyer are in possession of a letter saying that they must tell me what money is needed and I’ll pay it. If I haven’t paid, it’s because she has not told me what she needs,” he said.
The May 1995 custody order which gave Nancy Soller custody of their son has been hotly contested by Peter Soller over the years through various court applications in Cape Town and Johannesburg, most of which have failed and one of which he has failed to pursue.
Soller said he was operating outside of the court order because his ex-wife had also breached clauses in it. “You can’t just apply what suits you,” he said.
Soller said his contempt of court over the holidays had to be seen in the context of “a nine-year battle” between the parents. He alleged that his wife had left him for another woman, but Nancy Soller denies she is a lesbian. “People say it doesn’t matter, but it’s still defamatory because it’s not true,” she said.
This week Soller claimed that his ex- wife suffered from Munchausen’s syndrome, and that this, together with the lack of a male presence, was negatively affecting their son.
Soller earned a reputation as a vociferous proponent of fathers’ rights when he successfully defended unmarried father Lawrie Frasier in a custody battle against the adoptive parents chosen by the mother of his child. Frasier is still facing criminal charges after the child was kidnapped from the adoptive parents in Malawi, sparking a region-wide search.