JUDGEMENT OF APALOO J.S.C.
Apaloo J. S.C. delivered the judgement of the court. This appeal is from the judgment of Charles Crabbe J. (as he then was) in which he declined to revoke the codicil of the late J. T. N. Yankah who died at Accra on 7 September 1964.
The testator was a schoolmaster of acknowledged eminence. Some years before his death, he took ill and was in and out of hospital by turns. The medical evidence shows that he was suffering from a blood disease known as leukaemia. It would seem that the testator had a premonition of his approaching end. He accordingly decided to dispose of his property by will. Being a scholar and a man of the world, he was not unknowledgeable about how to do this. He himself put his wishes in writing and requested Mr. Caseley-Hayford to put it in legal language.
The latter is a relation of his by marriage being a first cousin to Mrs. Yankah. The evidence also shows that Mr. Caseley-Hayford was on terms of great intimacy with the testator and his wife. He and Mr. Yankah called each other by the amiable pet name "Cos.” Mr. Caseley-Hayford duly put the testator's written wishes in legal form and this will was executed on 28 January 1963 (exhibit A). There is no dispute of any sort about the will.
Judging by the dispositions in that will, the late Mr. Yankah could not be said to be possessed of considerable fortune, but he was far from being a poor man. He had two, two-storeyed houses and a piece of land at Accra. It seems that he acquired these by his own exertions. He also inherited his mother's house at Cape Coast. He left a modest sum of money at the bank. The evidence shows that the testator had by his wife seven boys and an only daughter. All these survived him as well as his wife who died just about two-and-half months after the testator. Mr. Yankah was also survived by a brother, a cousin and probably a few remote relatives. Of the two houses owned by the testator, he devised the newer one to his wife for life and thereafter jointly to all his grandchildren by her. He devised his other house to his brother for life and after his death to his only daughter and her children. He devised the vacant land to his daughter. The only bequest Mr. Yankah left in his will which benefits his male children were, to quote the will, "clothes, my few books, my illuminated addresses and copies of memoranda and articles I published in the press." This gift was made jointly to all his children and this will include his only daug
