A private legal practitioner has stated that the law criminalises the ejection of surviving spouse after the demise of their partner.

Speaking on Joy News' The Law on Sunday, Kweku Paintsil noted that under the PNDC law 111 Section 16(A), "A person shall not before the distribution of the estate deceased person whether testate or intestate, eject a surviving spouse or child from the matrimonial home."

According to him, an individual in breach of the PNDC law could be imprisoned or made to pay a fine.

"Even though spouses is used in a neutral gender to refer to either man or woman, more often than not, we are talking about women being at the brunt of these customary practices. So when a man has died, people go and remove the woman and children from the house.

"This time section 16 of the PNDC Law criminalises such conduct and it prohibits anybody from seeking to throw out a surviving spouse and children from the matrimonial home where the man, the wife and the children were leaving

"It criminal, and you can go to prison if you are convicted. In addition, you could be fined or imprisoned, or both. The imprisonment is up to one year, the fine is 250 units which today translate to about ¢3000," he told host Samson Lardy Anyenini.

However, Paintsil, Paintsil & Co's head also revealed that a spouse can only be ejected from a self-acquired property of the deceased or a rented property according to a court order.    

Again, he added that, in the case where the deceased lived in a family house, the living spouse can be ejected after six months from the date of the deceased's death.  

Mr Paintsil further stated that if the home is public property, the ejection of the spouse can be effective after three months from the date of the death of the deceased.