Your marriage is invalid if the officiator and/or the place where it is officiated are not licensed to do so, legal practitioner, Abdulai Jalaldeen has said.
Speaking in an interview on Breakfast News, Mr. Jalaldeen emphasised that marriages require not only registration to be valid but also a licensed officiator and a place registered for the contraction of such union.
He said marriages contracted by clergymen who are unlicensed and at worship and social centres not registered for such activity are not recognised by the laws of the land.
“Even most of the marriages, apart from not being registered, those who even contract the marriages make them void. Because the one who is officiating your marriage should be a licensed person, where you are contracting the marriage should be a licensed place. How many of us know this?
Don’t you see people contracting marriages on school premises? Where they go every week to do their church service, they think that it is a place they can do marriages. They are contracting marriages there. Those marriages are void. They are not proper marriages,” he stated.
Mr. Jalaldeen, however, observed that many are oblivious of these requirements and therefore, have entered into marriages that are null and void.
He said this while underscoring the importance of marriages registration. Mr. Jalaldeen, who is the Upper East Regional Director of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, said registering a marriage does not only make it valid but serves as a proof of the union especially in an event where one of the spouses dies without a will.
He dispelled notions that registering a Muhammadan or a Customary marriage converts it into an Ordinance or Christian marriage.
Per the laws of Ghana, Customary and Muhammadan marriages are required to be registered within a week after contraction of the union. Failing to do so renders the union invalid.
However, the Registrar General Department has disclosed that about 80 percent of Muhammadan marriages are invalid due to the refusal of many to have their unions registered.
This is, Mr. Jalaldeen noted, is as result of lack of understanding of the importance of such exercise and misconceptions surrounding it.
