[1965]DLHC1807 • May 27, 1965 • High Court
GRAHAM vs. GRAHAM
The parties, Leonard Yaw Graham and Juliana Awo Nutakor, were initially married under customary law. Subsequently, on 14 November 1954, they underwent a Christian marriage ceremony at St. Peter Claver's Roman Catholic Church, Dzelukofe, Keta. About ten years later, the husband instituted proceedings for dissolution of the prior customary law marriage before the Accra-Tema City Local Court. The wife challenged the jurisdiction of that court, contending that the marriage was now governed by the Marriage Ordinance due to the church ceremony.
read moreJUDGMENT OF KINGSLEY-NYINAH J.S.C. On or about 14 November 1954 the parties in this instant motion were lawfully married at St. Peter Claver’s Roman Catholic Church, Dzelukofe, Keta, by a reverend father of that denomination. Prior to and at the time of that church ceremony, there had been, and was, subsisting between the two contractors, a customary law marriage. Some ten years after that marriage in church (i.e. on 8 December 1964) proceedings were instituted by the husband, the respondent herein, for a dissolution of that prior and subsisting customary law union between himself and his wife, the applicant herein. That action was taken before the Accra-Tema City Local Court at Tema, and this motion is now brought by the defendant-wife who prays for an order of this court directing “that the Accra-Tema City Local Court is not the proper forum for the hearing and determination of the dissolution of a marriage under the Marriage Ordinance, Cap. 127 . . .” In the application...