Mirror lawyer:What is the difference between customary and ordinance marriage?
Dear Mirror Lawyer, What is the difference between customary marriage and ordinance or church wedding?
Michael Dadzie, Takoradi
Dear Dadzie, In Ghana the law recognises three forms of marriages. These are Ordinance Marriage, Customary Marriage And Marriage under Mohammedan Ordinance. The legal effect flowing from these marriages differ.
While Customary Marriage And Mohammedan Marriage permit a man to marry more than one wife, Ordinance Marriage limits a man to just one wife and no more. Your question seems to confuse the two.
Customary Marriage, as indicated above, is potentially polygamous and thereby the floodgates are open for the man to marry as many women as he can harmoniously cater for and live with in addition to an existing customary wife.
This, under our custom, is no crime whatsoever; it is accepted as part of our custom and cannot be a ground for divorce under customary law. It is also not in any way considered as adultery.
The discriminatory aspect is that while a husband under customary marriage is entitled to more than one wife, the woman in that customary marriage cannot flirt outside her marriage or marry more than one man.
The floodgate, for want of a better word, is only open to the men under customary law. Flirting outside the marriage for the woman can, therefore, be a ground for a man to divorce his wife.
Any child from other women considered as wives under customary marriage are legitimate children. In Ghana, there is nothing like illegitimate children, not even under ordinance marriage.
The definition of child under the prevailing laws sums up this position. Section 18 of the Intestate Succession Act, PNDC 111 defines a "child" to include a natural child, a person adopted under any enactment for the time being in force or under customary law relating to adoption and any person recognised by the person in question as his child or recognised by law to be the child of such person.
Also Section 7 of Children's Act 1998, Act 560 provides that no person shall deprive a child of reasonable provision out of the estate of a parent whether or not born in wedlock.
On the other hand, our law on ordinance marriage, governed by the Marriages Act (Cap 127), frowns upon the above. A man in such marriage can only marry one woman.
The definition of marriage as defined in the case of Hyde v Hyde states that it is the voluntary union between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others.
This goes to explain that the man can only tie the knot with one woman; he can therefore not marry another woman in addition to his lawfully wedded wife.
He has to first divorce her, otherwise it amounts to the criminal offence of bigamy and it is also a ground for divorce by either the man or the woman.
