DISTRIBUTED BY VERITAS TRUST Tel: [263] [4] 794478 Fax & Messages [263] [4] 793592 E-mail: veritas@mango.zw 21 Veritas makes every effort to ensure the provision of reliable information, but cannot take legal responsibility for information supplied. Judgment No. SC 37/18 Civil Appeal No. SC 433/16 that that threshold was arbitrary. It cannot be disputed that the children will, in all probability, still be at school when they attain the age of majority. Even if they are not, they may be awaiting enrolment at tertiary institutions. They are unlikely to be self-supporting. The suggestion that once the children attain the age of eighteen, maintenance should cease and that the respondent relates directly to each child is not feasible. As previously noted, there are expenses that are shared and cannot easily be apportioned between the appellant and the children. In any event the respondent did accept in the court a quo that maintenance for the children could be extended until they completed their secondary education. [46] In the result therefore, I consider it in the best interests of the children that the amount of $100 per month awarded at the time of divorce be increased, on an interim basis, to $300 per month per child. Since the children will not automatically be self-supporting at the age of eighteen and, in all probability, will be staying with the appellant, there is need that such maintenance continues until after the children complete their education (in the broad sense) or become self-supporting. Naturally, if either of the children, or both, on attaining the age of eighteen, decide not to live with the appellant, then the interim maintenance order can be varied in order to take into account that development. [47] I am also of the view that the interim maintenance be made payable from the date when the respondent became aware of the application for the upward variation of the maintenance. If it were not possible to do so, an applicant for maintenance would suffer prejudice, not because of any fault on her part, but because of the recalcitrance of an obdurate spouse, who ought not to be permitted in law to benefit from protracting the proceedings so as to reduce the