“I order that petitioner is at liberty to name the child of the marriage by performing a naming ceremony and/or ensuring that the name given to the child is captured in her (child’s) records,” the court held.
The Sekondi High Court in the Western Region of Ghana has ordered Doris Dsane of Effiakuma, New Site, to allow her ex-husband, Nana Aboagye Boachie-Danquah, to give their only child his chosen name in line with Ghanaian custom.
The court noted that it is an accepted norm among the various ethnic groups that a father must perform a child’s naming ceremony but not the mother, as in this case.
The plaintiff, Nana Aboagye Boachie-Danquah contracted an ordinance marriage with the respondent and thus gave birth to a sole child.
However, as time went on, the marriage broke down beyond reconciliation and the woman’s desertion of the matrimonial home.
Subsequently, she named the child after her father without recourse to her husband.
In fact, in his testimony, the husband told the court that he only learned of the name on social media.
He thus commenced this action to seek the dissolution of the marriage, custody of the child, and an order of the court directed at the wife to enable him to rename the child in line with Ghanaian custom.
In its judgment, the court, presided over by His Lordship Dr. Richmond Osei-Hwere duly dissolved the marriage after finding that it had duly broken down without reconciliation.
Again, it was held that the petitioner, who is the father of the child, reserves the right to name the child, thus describing the purported naming of the child by the ex-wife and her family without recourse to the man as untenable in law, null, and void.
Read the full judgment on Dennislaw.
Source: DL news
