GRAHAM V. GRAHAM

KINGSLEY-NYINAH J.S.C.

On or about 14 November 1954 the parties in this instant motion were lawfully married at St. Peter Claver’s Roman Catholic Church, Dzelukofe, Keta, by a reverend father of that denomination. Prior to and at the time of that church ceremony, there had been, and was, subsisting between the two contractors, a customary law marriage.

Some ten years after that marriage in church (i.e. on 8 December 1964) proceedings were instituted by the husband, the respondent herein, for a dissolution of that prior and subsisting customary law union between himself and his wife, the applicant herein. That action was taken before the Accra-Tema City Local Court at Tema, and this motion is now brought by the defendant-wife who prays for an order of this court directing “that the Accra-Tema City Local Court is not the proper forum for the hearing and determination of the dissolution of a marriage under the Marriage Ordinance, Cap. 127 ...”

In the application, now before this High Court…