JANET TAGOE v. ALFRED NII TETTEH
2015
COURT OF APPEAL
GHANA
CORAM
- MARIAMA OWUSU, J. A (PRESIDING)
- ACQUAYE, J.A.
- TORKORNOO, J. A.
Areas of Law
- Evidence Law
- Probate and Succession
2015
COURT OF APPEAL
GHANA
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The case involves the validity of the late Edmund Adama Tagoe's Will. The Respondent, Tagoe’s third wife, challenged the Will, alleging it was forged due to ambiguities and insufficient provisions for her. The High Court ruled in her favor, but upon appeal, the Appellant argued that the judgment was against the weight of evidence and that the trial judge erred in law. The appellate court found critical lapses in the trial judge's evaluation of evidence and the law, and ultimately set aside the High Court judgment, holding that the burden of proving forgery lay with the Respondent.
TORKORNOO, J. A
A man called Edmund Adama Tagoe once lived in Koforidua.
He married three women in his life time.
He had three living children with the first wife, four children with the second, and five children with the third wife.
He died and was buried in September 2007. At that time, he had been married to his third wife for 42 years.
This third and last wife is the Plaintiff /Respondent (hereinafter referred to as Respondent) in this suit.
According to the Respondent in the statement of claim filed in the High Court, it was a year after his burial that the son of Edmund Adama Tagoe (the deceased) informed the family that the deceased left a Will.
It was the case of the Respondent in the court below that the Will produced ‘was not the act and deed of the late Edmund Adama Tagoe’. Her reasons for that position were in the main, that the names of the various children of the deceased were vaguely and ambiguously written, and with unwarranted punctuations which mis-described them in the Will, and had the Will been the act of the deceased, he would not have described the names of his children in the manner found in the Will.
Secondly, she said that the dispositions in the Will were so vague and ambiguous that they could not have been the act and deed of the deceased.
Her third position was that the signature of one of the witnesses is not his act and deed and as such the Will was procured fraudulently.
Her fourth complaint was that had the Will been the act of the deceased, he would have made adequate provisions for her as his wife at the time of his death.
Her fifth complaint was that certain properties of the deceased were not dealt with in the Will.
Her final position is that she filed a caveat before the probate was granted and had her caveat been brought to the attention of the court, the probate would not have been granted.
She claimed an order for the revocation of the probate granted to the sole executor of the undated Will, a declaration that the Will was not the act and deed of the deceased and that same is null and void, and an order of perpetual injunction restraining the defendant, servants etc from dealing with or disposing of the estate of the late Edmund Adama Tagoe until the final determination of the suit.
The Appellant denied her allegations regarding the Will not being the act and deed of Edmund Tagoe.
In an Amended Statement of Defence, he stated that the Will had clarified why the Respondent was given three million cedi