My Wife Never Had to Consent to the R10 Million I Put on the Line

It's often cheaper to be unemployed than to run your own business. I used to say this to other founders, half as a joke. When you're unemployed, your losses are capped at zero. Run a business at real scale, and there's no floor under you at all.

Most warnings about the personal cost of starting a business fixate on hours. A founder works sixteen-hour days, disappears from their own life for a year, nearly loses the relationship over it. It's a real pattern. But it's the visible sacrifice, the one you can point to and measure in missed evenings. The version that actually does the damage is quieter, and it doesn't show up on a calendar. It's financial exposure that grows in the background until it's larger than either you or your spouse ever agreed it should be.

I left a corporate role earning R100 000 a month to build a bakery business that, at its peak, turned over R20 million a month. Somewhere in the growth from one to the other, I'd signed personal surety on eight commercial leases and was carrying close to R10 million in personal exposure across leases and debt. Nobody hands you that number in one document at the start. It accumulates one signature at a time, each one reasonable on its own, until you look up and it's larger than your house.

The numbers

• R10 million in personal lease and debt exposure, carried against a previous salary of R100 000 a month (author's own case).
• Commercial landlords in South Africa routinely require a director's personal suretyship before leasing to a private company, regardless of the company's limited liability (Strauss Daly, commercial law practice note, 2022).
• South Africa's default marital regime, without an antenuptial contract, is in community of property under the Matrimonial Property Act 88 of 1984, meaning debts incurred by either spouse generally bind the joint estate.
• A spouse's consent is not legally required for a suretyship signed in the ordinary course of the signing spouse's own business, even in a marriage in community of property (Amalgamated Banks of SA Bpk v De Goede & 'n ander, 1997).

The plan that worked, until the financing stopped

The bakery ran on a hub and spoke model. A central production operation supplied a growing number of retail stores, and the economics only worked past a certain scale, because the central operation's costs were mostly fixed. Below that scale, you're paying for capacity you haven't filled yet. I'd modelled the number at eleven stores. The bank had seen the same model and backed it, financing store after store as we built the network out.

We got to eight. All eight were individually profitable. At eight stores, the bank decided it wouldn't finance the ninth.

That wasn't a failure of execution. Eight profitable stores is not a business in trouble. It was a financing partner changing its risk appetite mid-plan, for its own reasons, on a model it had already agreed to fund. But the model needed eleven stores to cover the central operation's costs, and eight stores' contribution margin couldn't quite close that gap. The shortfall didn't disappear because the bank stopped believing in it. It just stopped being the bank's problem and became mine.

Where the shortfall actually lands

This is what nobody tells you when they warn you about "the risk" of starting a business, as if risk were one thing. There's the risk of the idea not working, which is the one everyone plans for. Then there's the risk that something you don't control, a lender's appetite changing, breaks a model that was otherwise sound, and the gap it leaves has to be filled by somebody. If you can't raise more debt, and I couldn't, that somebody is you, personally, out of your own capital.

At the margins we were running, a one percentage point miss on breakeven meant finding R200 000 in a single month, from my own pocket, to keep the business a going concern. Not once. For every month the shortfall persisted. That's not a number that scales down gracefully against a R100 000 a month salary I'd walked away from. It compounds until you find more capital or you don't.

We eventually closed the gap by bringing in an investor rather than trying to trade our way out slowly. That was the right call, and it worked. But it took real time to get there, and every month in between was funded personally, against sureties I'd already signed and couldn't undo.

Why this doesn't stay contained in the business

Landlords routinely require the director of a private company to sign personal surety before agreeing to a commercial lease, regardless of the company's limited liability, because a new or thinly capitalised entity has no credit history worth trusting on its own. It's standard practice. Most new companies won't get a lease without it. That surety is often structured so you're bound as a co-principal debtor too, meaning the landlord can pursue you directly, not only after the company has exhausted its own resources first.

So the limited liability you thought incorporating gave you is conditional. It holds for the risks nobody asked you to personally guarantee. For the ones you did guarantee, and at any real scale you will, it doesn't hold at all.

What it means for your marriage, not just your balance sheet

If you marry without an antenuptial contract in South Africa, the law automatically places you in community of property, under the Matrimonial Property Act 88 of 1984. One joint estate. Debts either spouse incurs generally become debts of that estate, not just the one who signed.

You'd assume, reasonably, that your spouse has to consent before you can put the joint estate on the line like that. Sometimes. Case law (Amalgamated Banks of SA Bpk v De Goede & 'n ander, 1997) has held that where signing surety is in the ordinary course of your own business, your spouse's consent isn't required at all. You can expose the joint estate to a personal guarantee on a commercial lease without ever being legally obliged to tell your spouse beforehand, let alone ask. Even where consent should have been obtained and wasn't, courts have consistently made it difficult for a spouse to escape liability just by arguing they never agreed to it.

The number I mentioned earlier, R10 million in personal exposure against a R100 000 a month salary, wasn't only mine to carry. Under the marital regime I was in at the time, it was my wife's too, whether or not she'd ever seen the lease agreements. "You risked our security" lands harder than any complaint about missed evenings ever could. There's no version of "I was tired" that answers it, because tiredness was never the actual charge.

What I'd actually do differently

Not work fewer hours. That's not the lesson here, and it wouldn't be accurate to what happened. The lesson is about how you structure exposure before you need to.

Know your marital regime before you scale, not after something goes wrong. If you're in community of property and running a business with real lease or debt exposure, get your specific structure checked by a lawyer rather than relying on a general explanation like this one.

Cap what you sign. Landlords ask for personal surety as a default position. A surety limited to a set rand amount, or to a defined period, is worth negotiating for, and most first-time owners never ask.

Don't build a growth plan around a single financing relationship. My model needed eleven stores and had one bank behind all of it. When that bank's appetite changed, there was no plan B sitting ready, because I hadn't built one. If your model depends on continued access to capital, know where the second source is before the first one says no.

The size of your exposure is something your spouse should understand and actively agree to before you sign, whether or not the law requires their signature. Discovering it afterwards, once something has already gone wrong, is worse than any awkward conversation beforehand would have been. That conversation decides whether you're building this together, or building it alone while someone else quietly carries the downside.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need my spouse's consent to sign personal surety for my business in South Africa?

Not always. In community of property, the Matrimonial Property Act 88 of 1984 generally requires spousal consent for a suretyship, but case law (De Goede, 1997) has held none is needed where signing is in the ordinary course of your own business. Have your specific situation checked by a lawyer before you sign.

What happens to my spouse's assets if my business fails and I've signed personal surety?

Married in community of property, both spouses share one joint estate, and debts either incurs generally bind that estate. If the business fails and a creditor calls on your surety, your spouse's share of the joint estate can be exposed, even if they never signed anything themselves.

How do I limit my personal liability when signing a commercial lease?

Negotiate a capped suretyship, a maximum rand amount or a defined time period, rather than an open-ended personal guarantee. Landlords ask for unlimited surety as a starting position, and most commercial leases in South Africa include one by default. It's worth pushing back before you sign anything.

Does marrying out of community of property protect my spouse from my business risk?

Generally yes. Out of community of property, with or without accrual, keeps each spouse's estate separate, so one spouse's business insolvency doesn't automatically expose the other's assets. Accrual still allows sharing in growth at divorce or death, without the shared creditor exposure during the marriage.