Supreme Court urges spouses, prospective couples to negotiate marital properties

The Supreme Court of Ghana has advised married spouses and would-be couples to resolve property disputes peacefully through negotiation.

According to the court, this will deal with the winner-takes-all attitude in prosecuting divorce proceedings that has inundated the country’s courts with several petitions and appeals.

In a court document available on Dennislawgh, the five-member panel also observed that during divorce proceedings, spouses selfishly claim to have been the sole financier of the marital properties and proceed to petition for the award of the same to the exclusion of others.

The court made the following observations in a civil appeal brought before it in which the couples, having married customarily in 1997 and broken up per custom had to deal with the issue of who owns what in their union.

Thus being confronted with this case, their Lordships, in further acknowledging the devastating effects of marriage break-ups, noted that it mostly even leads to couples being in self-denial and painting each other as the cause of their predicaments.

In the end, the apex court upheld all property awards made by the Court of Appeal to each spouse except their matrimonial home at Ogbojo where it changed it from being awarded fully to the wife by giving a thirty percent(30%) interest to the man.