BOATENG v. BOATENG

The plaintiff-appellant who is the successor to the defendant-respondent’s late father, Jonas Kofi Boateng, instituted an action at the High Court, Koforidua against the defendant-respondent herein. His claim is for a declaration that house No BT/D7, Koforidua, which the defendant included in the inventory of the letters of administration she obtained in respect of the estate of her late father, was not the self-acquired property of the said deceased but rather family property.

The case put up by the plaintiff was that the land on which the house in dispute was built had been purchased by the deceased’s mother called Yaa Donkor. According to the plaintiff’s evidence, after purchasing the land in dispute, the said Yaa Donkor built a swish building comprising three rooms on a portion of the land and lived therein with her family. She also built a four-room uncompleted structure on the said land; that it was this uncompleted structure which the defendant’s late father with his said mother’s permission later pulled down and built the block house now in dispute in its place. It is the contention of the plaintiff-appellant, therefore, that the house built by the defendant-respondent’s late father could not be his self-acquired property. The plaintiff called three witnesses to support his case.

The defendant-respondent, on the other hand, contended that her late father had given money to the said Yaa Donkor with which the said Yaa Donkor, the mother of the defendant’s late father bought the land in dispute and built the swish buildings thereon. Defendant-respondent based her case on what she alleged her late father had told her, and also on the diaries kept by her said late father.

The trial judge accepted the story of the defendant, and so found that the defendant’s late grandmother, Yaa Donkor, in buying the land in dispute, acted as the agent of her son, the defendant’s late father. She held, therefore, that the land in dispute was the self-acquired property of the defendant's late father.

Dissatisfied with the decision of the court, the plaintiff appealed to this court. Four grounds of appeal were argued before us. These are the original ground (a) and the additional grounds 2, 5, and 7. These read as follows:

(a) The learned trial judge erred in holding that Yaa Donkor acted as agent in acquiring the plot of land for her son J K Boateng when there was no evidence whatsoever in support of this claim.

(2) The learned trial judge erred when she