The Court of Appeal in Kumasi has ordered a married man, Benjamin Yeboah Anokye, to pay GH¢40,000 in damages to Priscilla Atsu, a woman the court found he deliberately led to believe he would marry, even though he was already married to another woman under the Ordinance.
The court also ordered him to refund GH¢25,000 that Priscilla spent completing construction work on his house at South Suntreso in Kumasi, with interest calculated from January 2017.
But the woman also lost something, because the same court ruled that the house does not belong to her, and gave her only three months to pack out and find her own accommodation.
According to a report by The Law Platform on the case, Benjamin and Priscilla were in a relationship from 2011 to 2017, and they had a son together during that period.
The report states that Benjamin moved Priscilla all the way from Tamale to Kumasi, organised the naming ceremony for their child, and settled mother and son in his house at South Suntreso. To Priscilla, all of this pointed in one direction, that the man was going to marry her.
She told the court that Benjamin had gifted her the house, and that she had even performed a customary aseda thanksgiving ceremony to show her appreciation for the gift. She also insisted that he promised to marry her.
Benjamin denied everything. He told the court he never promised to marry Priscilla and never transferred the house to her.
Then came the argument that has got everyone talking. He claimed that because he was already legally married under the Ordinance, it was impossible for him to have made any valid promise to marry another woman in the first place.
The court did not buy it at all. The judges held that a man cannot use his own marriage as a shield after deliberately making another woman believe she was heading to the altar with him.
The court pointed to Benjamin’s own actions. He introduced Priscilla to his uncle as his fiancée, he persuaded her to keep the pregnancy when she was expecting their son, he relocated her to Kumasi, and he accepted full responsibility as the father of the child.
According to the judges, all of these acts were consistent with a genuine promise of marriage, so the GH¢40,000 award stands as compensation for the broken promise.
On the property side, things did not go Priscilla’s way. The court found her evidence about the aseda ceremony inconsistent, and she and her witnesses could not convince the judges that any formal ceremony took place, which means ownership of the house never passed to her.
The court also explained that the legal presumption that transfers between spouses are gifts applies only to married couples, not to unmarried partners, no matter how long they have lived together.
The High Court had earlier allowed her to remain in the house until she married someone else or had a child with another man, but the Court of Appeal set that order aside and gave her three months to move out.
The only consolation is that Benjamin’s duty to maintain their son under the Children’s Act remains fully in force, and the GH¢25,000 refund will come with interest.
