Harare Woman Divorces Husband, Hides Matrimonial House In Trust For Her Kids, High Court Cancels Its As Sham
Ex- Husband left out of property sharing rights, plan was to benefit even grandchildren
By Fanuel Viriri
A Harare woman who gave her husband the traditional divorce token — gupuro — in 2020 and then quietly transferred their matrimonial Marlborough home into her own family trust has suffered a major setback after the High Court cancelled the transfer and declared it a sham.
Unnah Chisango, a long-serving Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe employee who retired in October 2025 after 45 years of service, thought she had outsmarted the law when she registered the Unnah Chisango Trust MA 1190/21 on 24 June 2021 and, on 3 October 2024, transferred Stand *** Innisfail Township of Innisfail in Marlborough — measuring 4,870 square metres — into it.
High Court found that the house was not hers alone to hide. It was born from another house — Stand ***, Zvamunzana Road, New Marimba Park — allocated to her husband, Miles Tainganhamo Chisango, by the City of Harare on 10 July 1990. The couple started as an unregistered customary union on 29 December 1984 when lobola was paid, and formalised their marriage at the Harare Magistrates Court on 22 September 2006.
Their accounts of that first house could not be more different.
Miles, now a farmer, told Justice Phillips he paid $7,200 cash for the Marimba stand — $6,300 from his savings as a Mechanical Technician in the Ministry of Public Service and $900 borrowed from his brother. His even remembered his council card number was 80616.
When construction money ran out, his wife suggested she secure an RBZ loan, but the property had to be registered in her name as surety. He agreed. He said he drew the plan himself, bought river sand, pit sand and 3-quarter stones, made all the window frames and a six-metre French door, and later moulded 10,000 farm bricks in Marimba which he used to build eight mushroom houses in Marlborough.
Unnah disputed that version. She said in 1990 her husband had just left college and was unemployed, while she had been at the RBZ since 1980 and earned more. She claimed she paid his tuition, transport and upkeep at Polytechnic from 1987 to 1988 after they agreed he should return to school.
He never held a job for long, she said — fired from W.S Craster Engineering, out of work for five years, and later fired as a messenger of the court. She took out a personal loan to buy the stand and a mortgage bond to build. Moving to Marlborough was her idea she said.
She added the Marimba house was sold in 2014 for US$80,000; she channelled US$30,000 to his struggling farm, topped up with her own savings from successive RBZ loans, and bought Marlborough for US$120,000, while trading across Botswana, Zambia and Dubai to send their children to schools in South Africa and the USA.
But the marriage had collapsed. In 2020, furious, Unnah called her relatives and handed Miles gupuro. Since then they lived in separate bedrooms. In November 2020, Miles chased her relatives from the house, returned his wedding ring and said he was done.
Then came the bombshell she revealed in court: her husband was madly in love with one Zvanyadza, who was once her maid in Marlborough and whom she had even sued for adultery damages.
It was during the pandemic, she claimed, that fear changed her. Hospitalised for three weeks in 2020, she realised she had not secured her children’s inheritance. So in June 2021 she registered a trust and made her children beneficiaries — and if they die, her grandchildren would benefit. Miles was deliberately left out. “The children cited as beneficiaries are not in good relations with me as their father,” he complained.
He only discovered the trick when his lawyers filed divorce summons on 20 August 2024 and tried to serve her. While evading service, Unnah rushed to the Deeds Office and transferred the house into the trust on 3 October 2024. Her excuse: she had only finished paying the RBZ mortgage in 2024, so that was when transfer became possible. It had nothing to do with divorce.
Justice Phillipa Phillips did not buy it. In a judgment, the judge said the plaintiff had proved what the law requires: that the disposition was not genuine but a stratagem to defeat his just rights. Citing Chikuni v Maviyio HH 21/2020, Isaac Sithole v Lucia Sithole HH 674/14, and Muzanenhamo v Katanga 1991 (1) ZLR 182 (S), the court said while a spouse can sell property in their own name, the court will intervene where it is done at an undervalue, to a scoundrel, or to defeat the other spouse’s claim.
“The authenticity and intention of the transfer are highly questionable. The trust was registered in 2021 and three years later, the transfer was done on 3 October 2024 after the plaintiff instituted divorce proceedings and had tried a number of times to serve the summons. The only reasonable inference is that she registered a sham trust clearly intended to defeat the plaintiff’s claim when divorce became imminent,” .
Justice Phillips ruled. “Such conduct is a clear indication of deliberate action, undertaken with fraudulent intent.”
The court cancelled Deed of Transfer Number 4554/2024 in favour of Unnah Chisango Trust, ordered the Registrar of Deeds to endorse the cancellation, and revived Deed Number 5231/2014 in Unnah Chisango’s name. She was ordered to pay costs on a legal practitioner and client scale — the harshest punitive costs reserved for dishonest conduct.
For Miles, it means he can now claim his share under Section 7 of the Matrimonial Causes Act. For everyone else, it is a warning: you cannot hide a matrimonial house in a trust when divorce is knocking.
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