Adding value to spouse’s properties acquired before marriage gives partner interest – Lawyer

Spouses who, during the marriage, add substantial value to properties their partners acquired before the marriage will have a beneficial interest upon divorce, Mr. Karikari-Boakye Yiadom, a private legal practitioner, has said.

Mr. Yiadom stated this in a presentation on the topic: “Property ownership among spouses: the essence of wills” as part of a bi-monthly online sensitization programme organized by “Evolve You”, a nondenominational Christian faith-based women’s group in Tema.

He said even though under Ghanaian law, property acquired before marriage continued to belong to the spouse who owned it before the marriage, “if during the course of the marriage, the other spouse adds substantial value to the property, the character of the property changes and the spouse who added substantial value acquires a beneficial interest in it.”

He further noted that if a spouse added substantial value to his or her spouse’s family property, such a spouse would not become a joint owner of the family property; however, on an equitable basis, he or she might be entitled to his or her contribution upon divorce.

Mr. Yiadom, who is also a Senior Associate at Excel Legal Consultancy, said that the 1992 Constitution, Article 22(3) (b), stipulated that assets that were jointly acquired during marriage shall be distributed equitably between the spouses upon dissolution of the marriage.

He said the Supreme Court in Mensah vs Mensah stated that the sharing of spousal property should no longer be dependent on the substantial contribution principle and that property acquired during the marriage was joint property even if the other spouse did not make any contribution.

He stated that for the purposes of distribution, spousal property might be classified into family property, household goods, property acquired before marriage, and property acquired during marriage.

The legal practitioner noted that the position that the “husband takes all” would change when the courts realized that this was inequitable, adding that the position of the courts after this realization was based distribution on substantial contribution towards the acquisition of the property to be distributed.

He added that on the issue of sharing, the court stated that joint property should be shared on a 50/50 basis unless the equities of a particular case would make the application of the equality unfair.

“The court also held that if a wife takes care of the children of the household, prepares food for the husband, does his laundry, and takes care of the household, property acquired by the husband will be shared equally upon divorce unless it will be inequitable to do so,” he stated.