[1972]DLHC2181 • June 29, 1972 • High Court
ABU-JAUDEH vs. ABU-JAUDEH
The parties were married in 1954 in Kumasi and had two children. In 1968, the husband filed for divorce on grounds of cruelty and adultery. The wife challenged the jurisdiction of the Ghanaian courts on the basis that the husband was not domiciled in Ghana, despite his long residence. The husband, a Lebanese national, had lived and worked in Ghana for over 20 years, owning property and conducting business, but maintained strong ties to Lebanon, including sending his children there for education and retaining Lebanese citizenship.
read moreOn 28 August 1954, the principal parties to this suit were joined together in matrimony at the Deputy Registrar’s Office, Kumasi Municipal Council, Kumasi, as husband and wife. Fourteen years subsequently, and exactly two grown-up children later, the husband disillusioned and bewildered, instituted proceedings against his wife and another man (the co-respondent) on 12 March 1968 asking for a dissolution of their marriage on the serious grounds of cruelty and adultery. From the violence of the allegations canvassed by husband and wife against each other in their separate pleadings, it is easy to infer that that love which at the start was so warm, so tender and so beautiful, and which drew husband and wife together into wedlock-that love has now completely soured and is dishonoured, tarnishing the alluring glamour of earlier years. The embers of their earlier love having now so completely died out without the slightest hope of a rekindling towards meaningful reconciliation, one .....