Ghanaian courts no longer split marital property equally by default, a lawyer with FIDA-Ghana said, months after a high-profile divorce case drew public attention to the issue.
Ekua Abirago Buamponsem, a lawyer with the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA-Ghana), said courts increasingly apply a principle of equity rather than automatic equal division when distributing property after divorce.
“It is no longer equality, it’s equity,” she said.
The remarks, made on Asaase Radio’s Townhall Talk, come months after an Accra High Court ruling on the marital assets of businessman Richard Nii Armah Quaye and his former wife, Joana Quaye, drew criticism and prompted FIDA-Ghana to petition Parliament to fast-track a law on spousal property rights.
Buamponsem said courts first determine whether a property qualifies as jointly acquired marital property before considering how to divide it. She said courts once generally treated anything acquired during a marriage as jointly owned, but now require evidence of joint acquisition.
She said contribution is a key factor and is not limited to money. Household work, childcare, cooking, cleaning and creating conditions that let a spouse build assets can count as a contribution, she said.
But she said contribution alone does not guarantee an equal share. Courts also weigh how a property was acquired, including through inheritance, gift or loan. She said a spouse would not typically receive a share of property obtained through inheritance or a gift solely because they contributed as a homemaker, and similar reasoning can apply to property acquired before the marriage, depending on the circumstances.
Buamponsem said courts weigh the facts of each case rather than applying a fixed formula such as 50-50, 70-30 or 60-40, and urged spouses, particularly women doing unpaid domestic work, not to assume their contribution carries no legal weight, while cautioning that the eventual share still depends on the evidence in each case.
