A private legal practitioner has clarified that properties acquired before marriage cannot be included in the list of properties to be distributed during a divorce.

Sena Hotor explained that the court assumes properties that were acquired by one spouse before entering into marriage belong to that individual, and since the other party did not work or contribute to it, it cannot be added to the list of properties to be shared.

“The law is that any property you acquire before marriage does not form part of the spousal property, so when you’re in court for divorce proceedings as a man or a woman, the properties that you brought into the marriage will not be touched by the court in the splitting process.”

“Let’s say you acquire some properties as well when you were married together, during the splitting process, the court will ask themselves, at what point were these properties acquire.”

“If you’re able to prove and establish to the court that these properties were acquired before the marriage was contracted, the court will shift that property aside and focus on the ones that were acquired in the marriage,”he clarified.

Speaking on Joy Prime’s Prime Morning, Mr Hotor said that sometimes, certificates are needed to prove issues like these or someone who was present at the time of acquisition of those properties can testify in support of the spouse for those properties to be exempted.

He added that sometimes one’s spouse can even attest truthfully whether an asset was acquired before marriage or not.  

“Sometimes even your spouse will attest, Ghanaians are very honest, people don’t want to lie in court. If you lie in court it amounts to perjury and you can go to jail for that, so that threat of potentially going to jail makes people tell the truth.”

“Another way is that, you say you’ve bought a house before you got married so you have papers, documentation, you have a site plan that has your name on it and so you can show it to the court, look at the date on it and look at the time we got married, these are some of the ways,” he added.

However, the legal practitioner said in cases where all properties were acquired before marriage and none was acquired during the marriage, the court can order that those properties be split and distributed for the other spouse to receive a share of it.

“If it happens that all your properties were acquired before marriage, the court has the power to order that some of your property that you acquired before marriage be given to your spouse.”

“It will not classify those properties as spousal properties but under Article 22, the court has the power to make those orders in the interest of the children that have become part of the family set up,” he explained.