IN RE ARYEETEY (DECD); ARYEETEY vs. OKWAB

The dispute arose out of the administration of the estate of the late James Aryee Aryeetey. The applicant at the court below sought an order deleting the respondent’s name from the letters of administration on the basis that the respondent’s marriage to the deceased celebrated in London on 20 July 1963 was allegedly bigamous and therefore null and void, because there was said to be a prior subsisting customary marriage between the applicant and the deceased. The respondent, however, had also been married to the deceased under customary law since 1949 and had five children with him. The trial judge, although the application was only to remove the respondent as administratrix, proceeded to make findings on the validity of the respondent’s monogamous marriage and on the marital status of the parties. This is reflected in the judgment where Osei-Hwere JA stated that 'the claim of the applicant was not that she was entitled to any specific share of the deceased’s estate; her only claim being that the respondent’s name should be deleted from the letters of administration as she is not a proper personal representative.'

JUDGMENT OF OSEI-HWERE J.A. This appeal is a paradox. It was brought, essentially, by the respondent-appellant (hereinafter designated simply as the respondent) against whom an application brought by the applicant respondent (also hereinafter described as the applicant) to delete her name as the administratrix of the estate of the late James Aryee Aryeetey was dismissed. The application brought at the court below was transparently conceived in mischief because the applicant did not herself seek specifically for an order that she was entitled in her own right to be appointed an administratrix of the same estate. The foundation of her application was that the respondent was not the wife of a monogamous marriage to the late James Aryee Aryeetey and that the purported celebration of her marriage with the deceased on 20 July 1963 at the Metropolitan Borough of Hampstead in London was bigamous according to both United Kingdom and Ghanaian laws and hence the said marriage was null ...