JUDGMENT OF APALOO J.A.
This appeal concerns the succession to the estate of a man by name Kwabena Bempong who died at Kintampo in June 1952.
The late Bempong's maternal ancestry is traceable to Ashanti but the evidence shows that he was born to a woman called Ama Odurowaa at Anyinam where he lived all his life. The deceased went to Kintampo when he was afflicted with illness and the evidence is, that he went there to receive medical treatment. His illness did not apparently respond to treatment and he succumbed to it there. His remains were brought home to Anyinam and interred there. The [p.321] cost of the conveyance of the corpse from Kintampo to Anyinam was paid by some members of the Bretuo clan while the cost of the coffin and other burial expenses were met by the deceased's son Apraku and some of his relations.
The fact that the funeral expenses were paid by two families neither of which claimed blood relationship to each other was a sad foreboding of the succession to the late Bempong. A week after the burial, two different families assembled to celebrate his funeral. The deceased's children and other relations assembled in front of the house of the departed, while the odikro and members of the Bretuo family gathered for the same purpose at the entrance of the house of a man whose name was given as Agya Amoako.
The evidence shows that before the actual celebration of the funeral began, a Mr. Asiedu who was then in the company of the respondent and who belonged to what, I will call the Bretuo group, disputed the right of Apraku and his relations of Asona family to celebrate Bempong's funeral. It was claimed by Asiedu that the late Bempong belonged to the Bretuo family inasmuch as he was a slave to Adjepong who Asiedu claimed to be his ancestor. It would seem that Apraku and other members of the Asona clan did not pay heed to Asiedu's protest and went ahead with their part of the funeral. One of the persons then in the Asona group was one Kwasi Agyekum who came from Abomosu.
It would seem that Apraku was in possession of his father's personal effects. After the celebration of the funeral, he relinquished their possession to Kwasi Agyekum as the latter was appointed by his family at Abomosu to succeed the late Bempong. Apraku knew Agyekum to be a blood relation to his late father and considered Agyekum as rightly entitled to succeed his father. Asiedu did not accept this. He claimed that he was the rightful successor having been appointed to th
