Mrs. Amponsah filed for divorce from her husband Mr. Nyamaah. She asked that a property the couple held be partitioned and that she receive her portion of its value. Mr. Nyamaah asserted that the house belonged to his father, who then granted the land to him. He argued that Mrs. Amponsah had no interest in the house, relying on a precedent which held that “a wife by going to live in a matrimonial home, the sole property of the husband, did not acquire any interest therein. She only had a right to live in the matrimonial home as long as the marriage subsisted.” The court held that Mr. Nyamaah’s father was the owner of the house because the papers were in his name, and rejected the evidence that both parties paid water and electric bills as a rebuttal to the presumption. As such, the house was not subject to a partition by the court, because it “did not belong to the couple so it could not be settled on either of the parties.”
Women and Justice: Keywords
Domestic Case Law
Amponsah v. Nyamaah Superior Court of Judicature (2009)