[1971]DLHC2174 • July 20, 1971 • High Court
WHITTAKER vs. CHOITERAM
The case concerned the entitlement to letters of administration to the estate of Dr. Kenneth Charles Whittaker, deceased, an English national domiciled in Kumasi, Ghana, who died intestate. The plaintiff, his Ghanaian widow married under the Marriage Ordinance, claimed entitlement to the estate. The defendant, mother of two illegitimate children by the deceased, sought a joint grant of letters of administration, asserting customary law rights due to the concubinary relationship with the deceased. The children were admitted to be illegitimate. The dispute centered on whether the deceased was subject to customary law by virtue of his concubinary relationship and thus whether the estate should be distributed partly under customary law or entirely under English law of intestate succession.
read moreThe writ in this matter was taken pursuant to Order 60 r. 21 (2) of the Supreme (High) Court (Civil Procedure) Rules, 1954 (L.N. 140A), to determine who was entitled to the grant of letters of administration to the estate of one Dr. Kenneth Charles Whittaker deceased. The facts are not in dispute and the trial was confined to legal submissions. The plaintiff, a Ghanaian, was married under the Marriage Ordinance, Cap. 127 (1951 Rev.), to the deceased who died intestate. The intestate, a professor of mathematics at the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, was English by nationlity. He died at his home at Oxford in England, with Kumasi as his fixed place of abode at the time of his death. There was no issue of the marriage with the plaintiff. During the subsistence of his marriage the plaintiff, the intestate had two male children outside the marriage by the caveatrix. The two children as admitted are illegitimate. They are Allan Whittaker aged thirteen and Michael Whittake...