SYKES v ABBEY

The plaintiff and the defendant in this case were married under customary law in 1960. They lived together happily as man and wife for some 27 years until the marriage broke down in 1987. In the early stages of the marriage (to be precise two years after the marriage ceremony) the plaintiff, desirous of owning a house gave the cash sum of £70 to the defendant to purchase for her a plot of land, which the husband did and informed her that the land was situate at Abeka, but when later she pressed for the documents on the land, the defendant told her that the land had been stolen by someone who quickly put up a house on it. As a result, the husband released one of his own three plots of land to her as a replacement, and told her to build on it while he pursued the preparation of the title deed in her name together with the building plans.

The defendant's version was slightly different. He denied ever giving the plaintiff any land in replacement of the one at Abeka. However, he admitted receiving the £70, but said that when the land was paid for, the surveyor who demarcated the land, one J O Abbey, gave the site plan and receipts covering the transaction to the plaintiff at their residence. He said when later he got to know that the land had been sold to another person, he informed the plaintiff, and the vendor promised to replace it, but in the end failed to honour his promise.

Even though the plaintiff avers that she started building the house all by herself, after the defendant had offered to assist her with the supervision of the house, in reliance on the assurances given her by the defendant, to give her a valid title deed to the plot, and also to get her the final building plans in her name together with a building permit, the defendant, in paragraph (6) of his statement of defence, talks of putting up the building on the plot exclusively by him out of his own resources without any contribution in any shape or form from the plaintiff, except that on completion of the building the plaintiff or her own volition paid for the connection of light and water to the premises.

After fruitless attempts to get the defendant to execute the necessary documents in respect of the land in her favour, the plaintiff issued a writ in the High Court in October 1987 claiming:

"(a) A declaration that the plaintiff is the owner of house No B337/22 (B586/22) North Kaneshie, Accra and the plot or parcel of land on which it stands, the said house havin