ADDO AND ANOTHER v. MANKO

JUDGMENT OF ANNAN J.A.

The point for determination in this appeal concerns the right of succession to the self-acquired property of an intestate male member of a patrilineal family. The claim being made by the appellants on behalf of the children of the male intestate is that they are exclusively entitled to the immediate beneficial enjoyment of the self-acquired property of their deceased father and that any other interest must be contingent and must therefore be postponed to their right of immediate enjoyment.

The respondent, on behalf of the Kofi Broni family, the deceased's relatives, contends that at customary law the self-acquired property of a member of a family becomes family property upon his death intestate and therefore the children of the male intestate cannot have any exclusive or prior right to the beneficial enjoyment of the intestate's property since they constitute a part and not the whole of the inheriting family of the deceased member for purposes of succession to his self-acquired property. The parties, as well as the deceased, belong to the Kofi Broni family of the Kyerepong clan of the Akwapim Traditional Area and are admittedly subject to the patrilineal system of inheritance.

It is important, I think, to advert briefly to general principles which underlie the basic issue raised by the specific question before I proceed to consider that question. The general issue can safely be posed in the form of the question: who are the inheriting family of a deceased member of a family for the purposes of the beneficial enjoyment of his self-acquired property? Taking first the case of a male member of a family in a patrilineal society, from the moment of birth the position is that he was born into his father's family and so clearly became a member of that family by right of birth. He would then start life as a member of his father's family, together with any brothers and sisters who share a common paternity with him and under their father would constitute one unified family, patrilineal in character. For purposes of succession he would not, at birth, have any other relevant family since his right at law to identify with a family for the purpose of succession was determined at birth by his paternity. His family then would be his father's family and he would be a member of the family of his father. Since however a male member of a family in the patrilineal system is himself a point of origin of a new family, he starts such a family when he has