AFIA ABRAFI & ORS v. ABENA BIO & ORS

The Court of Appeal (per A. B. Poku-Acheampong, J.A.) reviewed a land dispute over House No. SC/30 at Old Estate, Obuasi, involving inter vivos gifts by Joseph Augustine Kwaah. The Appellants, Kwaah’s biological children, claimed he gifted them seventeen of the house’s twenty-one rooms, excluding two living rooms and two bedrooms gifted to nephews Kwabena Nyame and Akwasi Addai. The Respondents, maternal family members including Abena Bio, countered that Kwaah gifted four rooms to his children and their mother, two rooms each to Nyame and Addai, and the remaining thirteen rooms to the family, citing financial assistance from his mother, Yaa Mansah, as well as long occupation and payment of ground rents and property rates. Applying the civil standard of proof and customary gift principles (intention, publicity, acceptance), the court found the Respondents’ narrative more probable. It refused to consider a limitation defense not pleaded and found laches inapplicable. Concluding that the Appellants failed to prove seventeen rooms and the Respondents proved their counterclaim, the court dismissed the appeal and affirmed the High Court’s judgment.