Former senior police officer Marius van der Westhuizen, charged with shooting dead his three children, has run out of money to fund his legal fees, the Cape High Court heard on Tuesday.

Defence attorney Milton de la Harpe told the court he would approach the legal aid authorities on Van der Westhuizen's behalf for funding in order to continue as Van der Westhuizen's legal representative.

The issue of funding was raised when the case was on Tuesday postponed to 2 February, for the Christmas recess.

Van der Westhuizen has pleaded guilty to three murder charges, before Judge Willem Louw and assessor M Powell.

However, because his plea of guilty included the rider that he had "temporary, non-pathological criminal incapacity" at the time of the alleged shootings, the judge changed his pleas of guilty to not guilty.

At Tuesday's proceedings, forensic psychiatrist Larissa Panieri-Peter, of the Valkenberg Psychiatric Hospital, was recalled by prosecutor Mornay Julius.

She was asked to summarise her psychiatric findings concerning Van der Westhuizen's state of mind at the time of the shootings.

She said Van der Westhuizen had been intensely angry with his wife, Charlotte, after he had caught her out lying to him.

She said people sometimes became so angry that they did not care about the consequences of their anger, as Van der Westhuizen had been on the night in question.

She stressed however, that his actions in shooting dead the three children, one by one, had been purposeful and goal-directed, which excluded non-pathological criminal incapacity in the psychiatric sense.

She said many people led horrible lives, but this did not impair their capacity to understand right from wrong.

She said Van der Westhuizen's unhappy domestic circumstances over an extended period had broken him down from a psychiatric point of view, but that his circumstances had not been that extreme or overwhelming, compared with the suffering that many people experienced.

The domestic issues of his wife's alleged lies and deceit had been present for a long time, and had at worst caused him mild to moderate depression, she said.

Sapa