The Lagos State High Court in Ikeja has declared Adenike Ajayi as the sole lawful widow of the late founder and Chief Executive Officer of First Foundation Hospital, Tosin Ajayi, a popular medical doctor….
The Lagos State High Court in Ikeja has declared Adenike Ajayi as the sole lawful widow of the late founder and Chief Executive Officer of First Foundation Hospital, Tosin Ajayi, a popular medical doctor.
Delivering judgment on Wednesday, the judge, Oluwatoyin Odusanya, granted all the prayers put forward by Mrs Ajayi and her children.
The judge dismissed the competing claims filed by former beauty queen, Helen Prest, who had asserted that she was married to the late medical doctor.
The claimants, Adenike Oluyemisi Ajayi and her children, Tomi Deru, Olumide Ajayi, Omolade Soetan, Mayowa Okeowo and Bisola Ajayi, had instituted the case shortly after Dr Ajayi died on 26 April 2020, in Suit No. ID/3364LM/21, seeking declarations that Mrs Ajayi remained the only lawful wife of the deceased and was entitled to administer his estate.
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They also asked the court to recognise her entitlement to Mr Ajayi’s personal effects and one-third of his estate.
Ms Prest and her daughter, Tomisin Ajayi, opposed the suit, insisting that Mr Ajayi had been estranged from Mrs Ajayi for decades before his death and that he had entered into a valid Kalabari customary marriage with her.
During the longstanding trial, Mrs Ajayi told the court that she never challenged or queried her husband over his relationship with the first defendant. She said she saw women around her husband and she was not ready to fight.
Ms Prest told the court during her testimony, led by her counsel, Abiodun Owonikoko (SAN), that she met Dr Ajayi in 1996 while practising law and that he had been living alone for years before they met.
She also denied the existence of any continuing marital relationship between him and Mrs Ajayi.
But the claimants maintained throughout the trial that Mrs Ajayi remained the only lawful wife and that no valid customary marriage ever took place between the deceased and Ms Prest.
In its final judgement, the court held that Mrs Ajayi remained legally married to Mr Ajayi until his death, finding that their monogamous marriage was never dissolved.
It rejected the argument that long separation between spouses could, on its own, bring a marriage to an end.
“Separation, no matter how prolonged, does not dissolve a valid marriage unless there is a formal dissolution,” the court held, aligning with submissions by the claimants’ lead counsel, Kunle Adegoke (SAN), who argued that the marriage remained valid until the doctor’s death.
On Ms Prest’s claim of a Kalabari customary marriage, the court found that she did not present credible evidence to support it.
Justice Odusanya noted inconsistencies in her accounts, including earlier descriptions of herself as a common-law partner and, at another point, as being in a civil-law union with the deceased.
The court also held that even if such a marriage had existed, it would still have been invalid, since evidence showed that Ms Prest was still legally married to her former husband, Mr Davies, at the time she claimed to have married Mr Ajayi.
The court consequently dismissed Ms Prest’s claims in their entirety and affirmed Mrs Ajayi as the only legally recognised widow of the deceased.
It also upheld Mrs Ajayi’s entitlement to one-third of Mr Ajayi’s personal estate and ruled that she remains the only person entitled to apply for letters of administration over the estate.
