JUDGMENT OF TAYLOR J.
In this case the plaintiffs' claim against the defendant endorsed on the writ of summons is as follows:
"(a) An order of the court upon the defendant to subsist and maintain and educate the second and third plaintiffs until they attain the age of manhood.
(b) An order of the court upon the defendant to pay to the first plaintiff the sum of N¢576 or £G288 representing expenses incurred by her in respect of second and third plaintiffs towards their living, maintenance and subsistence from the date of death of their father until the date of the action reckoned at N¢0.80 or 8s. per day (i.e. from 4 February 1966 to 28 February 1968).
(c) Mesne profit.
(d) An order of the court upon the defendant to maintain the first plaintiff as from the date of her husband's death until she may get married or in the alternative until her death."
[p.58]
The defendant is admittedly the customary successor of one J. E. Appiadu (deceased) the husband of the first plaintiff and the father of the second and third plaintiffs. The claim of the plaintiffs is substantially a claim to be maintained by the defendant from the date of the death of the said Appiadu in the case of the first plaintiff for life or until she marries and in the case of the second and third plaintiffs until they are of age. It is not necessary to go into the pleadings at all. One of the issues formulated in the statement of defence and filed by the defendant at the summons for direction and on the basis of which inter alia the action was to proceed to trial is: "Whether or not the plaintiffs' action is in law premature or misconceived."
Proceeding apparently under Order 25, r. 3 of the Supreme [High] Court (Civil Procedure) Rules 1954 (L.N. 140A), counsel for the defendant has moved this court to set down this issue for hearing on the ground that it will substantially dispose of the matter. Of course in the affidavit in support of the motion it was conceded that the claim of the first plaintiff for maintenance in her own right as the wife of the deceased J. E. Appiadu is outside the scope of the motion. Accordingly claim (d) of the writ of summons was excluded from the present application.
The mainstay of the argument of counsel for the defendant is the Maintenance of Children Act, 1965 (Act 297). Under section 1 of that Act it is provided as follows: [His lordship here read the provisions of the section as set out in the headnote and continued:] The minister is enjoined if h
