MODEL Joelle Kayembe can celebrate the festive season in her plush, R5million "marital home", but needs to get out by mid-January, the Johannesburg high court ruled yesterday.

Her "ex-husband", Bongani Mbindwane, CEO of metals exploration company Platfields, lodged a court application for her eviction in June. Mbindwane wanted the leggy model booted out of the property in Hurlingham, Sandton, which he bought through Environmental Cleansing Solid, a company he co-owns with two others.

He told the court the home was bought for business purposes, and Kayembe was not entitled to live in it.

The couple have been embroiled in a bitter separation battle. Kayembe insists she was married to Mbindwane, but he says they never went through with the nuptials. Kayembe maintains the house is theirs, saying Mbindwane proposed to her on the property.

Yesterday Karen Foulkes-Jones, representing Mbindwane's company, argued that Kayembe was illegally occupying the house. She dismissed her claims that she was entitled to live there because she was customarily married to Mbindwane.

She said the company was paying a R46000-a-month bond on the house, and had already received an offer for it from an interested buyer. "The company is also paying for water, electricity and rates for someone who has no right to be living there," she said.

But Kayembe's counsel, Charles Thompson, said Mbindwane had created the impression that the house belonged to him. Mbindwane, he said, also referred to the house as "our home", and in an SMS to Kayembe he wrote: "Get out of my house."

Judge Nigel Willis responded: "In this town of Johannesburg money is everything. Your client is not going to have a free ride over this property."

The judge said he would allow Kayembe to have her New Year's Eve party at the house, but she had to find another place to stay by January 15.