When Is A Wife Not A Wife? A Legal Opinion On Mrs. Adenike Oluyemisi Ajayi & Ors. v. Ms. Helen Prest-Ajayi & Anor. Case.

FACTS OF THE CASE

Dr. Tosin Ajayi, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of First Foundation Hospital, died intestate on 26 April 2020. He left no will.

Within months of his death, two women emerged, each claiming to be his lawful widow. The first, Mrs. Adenike Oluyemisi Ajayi, had contracted a statutory marriage with Dr. Ajayi under the Marriage Act. Although the couple had lived apart for many years before his death, no divorce proceedings were ever initiated. No petition for dissolution was filed, and no decree nisi or decree absolute was obtained.

The second, Ms. Helen Prest, a former Miss Nigeria, contended that she and Dr. Ajayi had been in a relationship since 1996, which later culminated in a customary marriage under Kalabari native law and custom. She relied on their long cohabitation, their public presentation as husband and wife, and the fact that they had a daughter, Tomisin, whom Dr. Ajayi acknowledged and raised as his own.

The dispute came before the High Court of Lagos State, Ikeja Judicial Division, in Suit No. ID/3364LM/21.

Mrs. Adenike Oluyemisi Ajayi and her children sought declarations that she remained Dr. Ajayi’s only lawful wife and was therefore the sole person entitled to administer his estate. Helen Prest and her daughter opposed the suit, maintaining that Prest was also a lawful wife by virtue of a valid customary marriage.

After almost five years of litigation, Justice Oluwayoyin Odusanya delivered judgement on 17 June 2026.

WHAT THE COURT DECIDED

The court held that Mrs Adenike Oluyemisi Ajayi remained Dr Ajayi’s lawful wife until the date of his death because their statutory marriage had never been dissolved by a court of competent jurisdiction. The fact that the parties had lived apart for many years did not terminate the marriage in law.

The court rejected Helen Prest’s claim of a customary marriage on two independent grounds.

First, she failed to establish that a valid Kalabari customary marriage had ever taken place. She was unable to identify with certainty when or where the alleged marriage occurred and produced neither documentary nor photographic evidence of the ceremony. The court also observed that her description of the relationship had not been consistent across earlier proceedings, noting that she had previously characterised it in terms falling short of marriage.

Secondly, the court found that, at the time of the alleged customary marriage, Helen Prest remained legally married to her former husband, Mr Davies. Consequently, even if the customary marriage had been proved, she lacked the legal capacity to contract another valid marriage while the earlier marriage subsisted.

Accordingly, the court declared Mrs Adenike Oluyemisi Ajayi to be Dr Ajayi’s sole legally recognised widow. She was entitled to apply for Letters of Administration and to receive the one-third share of the deceased’s personal estate reserved for a surviving spouse.

The remaining two-thirds of the estate was ordered to be distributed among Dr Ajayi’s children, including those born both within and outside the statutory marriage. Importantly, the court’s rejection of Helen Prest’s claim as a spouse did not affect Tomisin’s status as one of Dr Ajayi’s children. What failed was Prest’s claim to the legal status of wife, not her daughter’s entitlement as a child of the deceased.

THE POSITION UNDER THE MATRIMONIAL CAUSES ACT

The Matrimonial Causes Act (“MCA”), Cap. M7, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, governs the dissolution of marriages celebrated under the Marriage Act. It provides the exclusive legal mechanism by which such marriages may be dissolved. Section 15 of the Matrimonial Causes Act empowers the court to dissolve a marriage where it has broken down irretrievably. However, the existence of any of the statutory grounds does not, by itself, end the marriage automatically. A marriage continues to exist until the court grants a decree nisi, which subsequently becomes absolute after three months. This was affirmed by the Supreme Court in Amobi v. Nzegwu (2014) 2 NWLR (Pt. 1392) 510, where a purported later marriage was held invalid because the earlier statutory marriage had not yet reached decree absolute at the time of the husband’s death, a principle directly applicable to Mrs Adenike Oluyemisi Ajayi’s position, where no decree of any kind was ever sought. 

This distinction is critical. Separation, even for decades, does not dissolve a statutory marriage. No matter how the parties regard the relationship as completely over, their legal status as husband and wife remains intact until a decree absolute is issued.

That principle lay at the heart of Mrs Adenike Oluyemisi Ajayi’s claim. Since no divorce proceedings were ever commenced and no decree was granted, the statutory marriage remained legally subsisting at the time of Dr Ajayi’s death. She therefore retained all the legal rights attaching to the status of a surviving spouse.

The MCA also reinforces the principle of monogamy. Under section 3, a statutory marriage is void if, at the time it is contracted, either party is already lawfully married to another person. Although that provision governs statutory marriages, it reflects the broader legal principle that a person cannot validly contract another marriage while an earlier lawful marriage subsists.

THE POSITION UNDER THE MARRIAGE ACT

The Marriage Act, Cap. M6, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, governs the formation of statutory marriages and contains complementary provisions regulating the relationship between statutory and customary marriages. Section 33(1) provides that a marriage celebrated under the Act is invalid if either party is already married under customary law. Also, section 47 criminalises the situation where a person who is already married under the Marriage Act subsequently contracts a customary marriage during the subsistence of the statutory marriage.

Read together, these provisions establish a clear message: Nigerian law does not permit a person to maintain a valid statutory marriage while simultaneously entering into another valid marriage, whether customary or statutory. The two systems are mutually exclusive once a valid statutory marriage exists. This principle has direct relevance to Helen Prest’s claim. Even if she had successfully proved the existence of a Kalabari customary marriage, the evidence accepted by the court showed that she remained married to Mr. Davies (Her first Husband) at the relevant time. She therefore lacked the legal capacity to contract another valid marriage with Dr. Ajayi. The Supreme Court took the same approach in Jadesimi v. Okotie-Eboh (1996) 2 NWLR (Pt. 429) 128, where a subsisting earlier marriage was held to defeat the validity of a later one in the context of a contested succession. Accordingly, her claim failed not only because the alleged customary marriage was not proved but also because, on the court’s findings, any such marriage would have been legally incapable of taking effect.

Having found that Mrs. Adenike Oluyemisi Ajayi’s statutory marriage remained subsisting and that Helen Prest’s alleged customary marriage was neither proved nor legally sustainable, the court concluded that only one person qualified as the deceased’s surviving spouse. 

Helen Prest and her daughter have appealed the judgment at the Court of Appeal, Lagos Division. Among other grounds, they contend that the trial court failed to give proper effect to an earlier consent judgment delivered in January 2021, which they argue recognised both women as co-wives of the deceased. They also challenge the court’s characterisation of Helen Prest as a “mistress”, arguing that the description exceeded the issues before the court and was unsupported by the evidence. An application for stay of execution is presently pending. Until the appeal is determined, the decision of the High Court remains the operative judgment, although its findings are subject to appellate review.

CONCLUSION

The decision in Mrs Adenike Oluyemisi Ajayi & Ors. v. Ms Helen Prest-Ajayi & Anorexia serves as a timely reminder that, in matters of marriage and succession, legal status is determined by law rather than by appearances or the practical realities of a relationship.

For statutory marriages, separation does not amount to divorce. No matter how long spouses have lived apart or how settled new relationships may have become, a marriage celebrated under the Marriage Act remains valid until it is dissolved by a court through a decree absolute under the Matrimonial Causes Act. The legal rights and obligations arising from that marriage, including inheritance rights, continue to subsist until then.

The judgment also underscores that claims founded on customary marriage require more than evidence of cohabitation, public recognition, or the existence of children. A claimant must establish both that a valid customary marriage was contracted in accordance with the applicable native law and custom and that the parties had the legal capacity to enter into that marriage. The absence of either requirement is sufficient to defeat the claim.

The case illustrates the importance of distinguishing between social reality and legal reality. Relationships may evolve, families may become blended, and parties may conduct themselves as husband and wife for many years. However, where questions of succession and inheritance arise, courts will look beyond the nature of the relationship to determine whether the legal requirements for a valid marriage have been satisfied.

Although the matter is now before the Court of Appeal, the High Court’s decision reaffirms a longstanding principle of Nigerian matrimonial law, a spouse does not cease to be a spouse simply because the marriage has broken down. Until the law says otherwise, a wife remains a wife. This is, perhaps, the clearest answer to the question posed by this case: when is a wife not a wife? Under Nigerian law, she is not a wife only when the marriage has ceased to exist in law or when the purported marriage never attained legal validity in the first place. Until then, legal status prevails over lived reality.