Cape Coast Assembly registered 677 marriages last year
The Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly (CCMA) registered 677 marriages last year as against 693 in the previous year.
Advertisement
Last year, the assembly reviewed upwards its registration fee from GH¢20 for normal marriage registration process to GH¢30 while special marriage process went for between GH¢35 and GH¢85.
Mr Edward Steele-Dadzie, Principal Executive Officer in charge of the Marriage Registry at the CCMA, made this known in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Cape Coast last Wednesday.
Registration fees
Mr Steele-Dadzie said GH¢18,390 was realised from the registration of 613 normal marriages which went through 21 days public notices, while GH¢ 5,400 was made from 64 special marriages which took less than the 21-day notice.
He said 28 days into the New Year, 20 normal marriages have so for been registered with the assembly, but no special marriage had been registered so far.
Mr Steele-Dadzie said the oldest couple that registered their marriage last year were aged 72 for the groom and 68 for the bride while the youngest couple, were 23 years for the groom and 21 for the bride.
According to him, the oldest couple registered in 2013 were an 81-year-old groom and 63-year-old bride, while the youngest couple were a 23-year-old groom and 21-year-old bride.
Rampant rate of divorce cases
Mr Steele-Dadzie expressed concern about the rampant rate of divorce cases reported and urged would–be couples to endeavour to adequately prepare themselves before going into marriage since the marriage institution was a very important one instituted by God.
Other Trending Stories
He said it was unfortunate that some youth just followed the crowd and ended up rushing into marriage without actually understanding its consequences.
He, therefore, urged them to always go for marriage counselling to prepare them well for marriage.
Mr Steele-Dadzie regretted the situation where young men were forced to marry girls they impregnated and stressed that in some cases, such men were unemployed, thereby making it very difficult to take care of their families.
The Ghanaian family Law recognises a plurality of marital forms, namely; traditional or customary law marriage, consensual unions, religious marriages contracted under Islamic rules/ Christian rules (ordinance) and Civil Marriage.
Of these four types of marriages, marriage under customary or traditional law marriage accounts for most marriage contracts in Ghana.
Credit: GNA